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Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

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Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

#501

Post by DiThi »

Bahamut wrote: post #334
arca_vorago wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to tell everyone licensing is more important than they realize, but there are so many people who fundamentally misunderstand licensing and therefor just don't care (dwtfyw license for example), or have falsely been trained by subpar instructors at uni and $othertraining about how bsd/mit is the superior license for business because $reasons. The four freedoms and free software solve so many of the pr…

Are you a lawyer? If not, you would be doing a disservice to anyone curious about the topic. My own company's lawyers consider the GPLv3 toxic and not allowed at all for company use in any software we create - that's enough for me.

Your lawyers probably don't know the difference between a tool and a library that is used in a published product. The code of a GPL licensed internal tool is not linked to the product (in the programming sense: there's no "object linking" or mixing of the code). You don't even need to release the source to the public if the tool itself is not available to the public.

Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

#502

Post by [deleted] »

uiri wrote: post #488
alecco wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm astounded how everyone things MIT == Apache2. MIT doesn't protect you from patent litigation. This is a backwards move. Facebook is very good at PR painting this as a win for users. See http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Patent_clauses_in_software_licences... an explanation https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/1890

The MIT license does not explicitly mention patents. However, depending on the lawyer, an argument could be made that it contains an implicit patent license. I think that Facebook would have an uphill battle arguing that their relicensing didn't include patents after this kerfuffle.

[deleted]

Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

#503

Post by CydeWeys »

ng12 wrote: post #475
rhizome wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're splitting hairs to reduce the significance of WP's stance.

No, he's not. He's pointing out that calling it an "exodus" implies that many individual projects have decided to abandon React. In this context WordPress is just one project, not "25% of all websites".

WordPress runs 25% of all websites. That is huge. You're trying to trivialize it as being "just one project" when it's really one of the most widely used and significant projects out there. One decision that WordPress makes is worth tens of thousands of decisions from much smaller projects that aren't used very widely. WordPress is a many billion dollar a year industry in itself, and whether it uses React or not will directly contribute to many thousands of web developers out there learning it or not.

Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

#504

Post by cjbprime »

chrisco255 wrote: post #336
Lazare wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the story is this: 1. Software patents are a huge, huge, existential crisis facing our industry. 2. So huge, in fact, that nobody wants to deal with it. We can't realistically figure out if the libraries we are using are covered by patents, and given how broken issuance is, they probably are. 3. So the only practical solution is to use MIT licensed libraries, pretend there's no patent issue, and put our heads…

This. I don't even want to know how many patents we're all infringing on in everything we ship. We all just sort of sweep this under the rug. No one ever does a technical/patent analysis. Is patent check part of your deployment pipeline? I highly doubt it. There's probably tens of thousands of broadly worded software patents out in the wild. The only thing that keeps the industry safe is how difficult it actually is…

You're actually discouraged from conducting that patent analysis, since damages are trebled for willful infringement.

Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

#505

Post by mort96 »

optimuspaul wrote: post #466
Lazare wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is not. If you know the patent exists, you get higher (I think triple?) damages. If you don't, you don't. And you have no obligation to check. Example: There is a patent in the US on ordering food from a menu online. It's held by a NPE (aka, a patent troll), and they charge a fairly high license fee. Some people who offer online ordering to restaurants pay the license fee; others don't. If you don't pay, then y…

Good god how is that even patentable?? That's not at all novel.

Neither novelity nor lack of prior art are requirements for getting a patent, it seems. If a patent has prior art, or is incredibly obvious, that might help your case in court if you're getting sued, but if you're an individual or small company getting sued for patent infringement by a company with an army of lawyers, you've already lost.

Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

#506

Post by mort96 »

kelnos wrote: post #384
ploxiln wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's licensed MIT, the Engineers just say "it's MIT license like half of the libraries we already use" and it's a legal non-issue. If the license is not one of the standard ones already in use, and it mentions patents, suddenly legal gets involved and it's a disaster. They're very risk-adverse and no one's really sure what will happen when it gets to court. It doesn't have to make sense - after all, most software…

So, in other words, what you're effectively saying is that everyone's reaction to this is irrational, but understandable. People understand the MIT license (or even just the regular BSD license), but as soon as something brings patents into the mix, even if the clause actually gives you more rights and legal cover, people get scared and don't want to deal with it? That's... sad. > Being aware of patents ... makes pun…

An argument I've read is that MIT and BSD are widely understood to give an implicit patent grant, and Facebook's explicit grant overrides the implicit one, and Facebook's is more restrictive than the implicit one because you lose that patent grant if you ever try to sue Facebook.

Also, IANAL, so I may be entirely wrong.

Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

#507

Post by mort96 »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #471
slaymaker1907 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only over the React patents. They could, however, sue you over your VR system or something but leave you little recourse due to not wanting to lose your React/other FB patent grants.

What React patents are there? And it seems to me that using Preact/Vue/etc would not be any better than using React if in fact there are patented technologies in React.

Is there _any_ technology that isn't covered by some patent? I would imagine virtually every library we use unknowingly infringes on dozens of patents.

Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

#508

Post by chrisco255 »

wmccullough wrote: post #198
chrisco255 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well...now back to writing code and shipping things...we can all put our irrational fantasies of patent litigation and being "unacquirable" startups due to React to rest.

I love HN, and I hate to risk my account, but I'm tired of responses like this. You're being an asswipe. There is no reason for you to respond this way. The lens upon which you view the world must be pretty god damned shallow to make these kinds of statements. If you want to be a fuckstick and reply like this, please find another community.

I guess I can adjust my tone. I have never heard of a startup being turned down for acquisition due to their front end framework of choice, but that became a fear that was legitimately passed around over React. It was irrational, in my opinion.

Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

#509

Post by ng12 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #503
ng12 wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he's not. He's pointing out that calling it an "exodus" implies that many individual projects have decided to abandon React. In this context WordPress is just one project, not "25% of all websites".

WordPress runs 25% of all websites. That is huge. You're trying to trivialize it as being "just one project" when it's really one of the most widely used and significant projects out there. One decision that WordPress makes is worth tens of thousands of decisions from much smaller projects that aren't used very widely. WordPress is a many billion dollar a year industry in itself, and whether it uses React or not will…

All of that is true but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about individual projects who decided to abandon React -- not the influence of said projects.

Re: Relicensing React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js

#510

Post by apaszke »

aub3bhat wrote: post #240
tempw wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which license is PyTorch?

PyTorch itself isnt, But the multi-GPU version requires Gloo which is BSD+PATENTS https://github.com/facebookincubator/gloo/blob/master/PATENT...

PyTorch uses NVIDIA NCCL for multi-GPU communication (under BSD license). Gloo is only one of the three backends that can be used for distributed communication out of the box.
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