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Can someone explain how this can affect to projects using react, as in a part of a product of a company or personal projects? Thanks I found this [1]: > FB is

Can someone explain how this can affect to projects using react, as in a part of a product of a company or personal projects? Thanks I found this [1]: > FB is not interested in pursuing the more draconian possibilities of the BSD+patents license. If that is true, there is actually very little difference between BSD+patents and the Apache license. As such, relicensing should make little if any pragmatic difference to Facebook. So what happens if Facebook doesn't change the license and in the future changes its mind? [1] https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/10191 https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/10191

twunde 9y ago
Facebook has reserved its rights with their license and they can decide to enforce it at any time. Personal projects should be ok, but commercial projects should involve a discussion with legal. If the company thinks it's possible that they end up in a lawsuit with FB, it won't be allowed. For those who get caught unawares, they will have to move off react if possible, or seriously consider settling.
- mikekchar 9y ago
  For personal projects, my interest here is in whether or not the patents license is compatible with other free software licenses (say GPLV3). That might be a consideration for some people.
  - jorgemf 9y ago
    As far as I understood It is not compatible with other licenses, that is why the apache foundation doesn't allow it. (But don't ask me which licenses, I have no idea)
  - kevin_b_er 9y ago
    Section 11 might be incompatible with the facebook Patent+BSD license.
geofft 9y ago
From Mark Thomas's comment on this bug: > My reading of that is if you use this code and Facebook infringes a completely unrelated patent that you own, you can't sue them for infringement without giving up this patent license. That is much broader than the language in the ALv2 which is limited to a single work. So it almost certainly doesn't affect personal projects unless you are the sort of person who files for patents as a hobby, but for a commercial project, the scenario, I think, is that if you own some patent (not even a software patent!) and you sue Facebook for it, you lose your patent rights to React. In effect, you may as well be granting Facebook a patent license to literally all your patents for use in any context, in exchange for using React. Also, it's not just Facebook: it also covers suing anyone for infringing your patent in their use of any other Facebook product or service, as well as "any party relating to" React -- so quite possibly, depending on how lawyers and judges read the license, you can't enforce your non-software patents against anyone who uses React.
- tomelders 9y ago
  I think this is misleading. In the event that you bring a patent infringement case against Facebook, you still have a license to use react, but you lose the patent rights that would cover you if you came up with something that infringed on a Facebook patent. Meaning that you now have to fight your case in court without any protection. You're safer with this license and the patent grant, than you are without it. The BSD license on it's own, and the MIT license don't give you any sort of patent grant at all.
  - geofft 9y ago
    That depends on whether you believe that the BSD license gives you an implied patent grant - it does, after all, just say "Redistribution and use...are permitted," without saying anything specific to copyright. See also http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Implicit_patent_licence http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Implicit_patent_licence If the concept of an implicit patent license is coherent and legally meaningful (it sounds like it is), then an explicit patent license, like Facebook's, would supersede it - and so losing your rights under the explicit license would leave you worse off than relying on the implicit one. In any case, this is why people like the Apache license and the GPLv3, so you don't have to think about whether a patent license is implied. Both of those have explicit patent licenses with significantly less draconian termination clauses than Facebook's. (Obviously I am not a lawyer, otherwise I'd know better than to comment on HN about unclear areas of IP law.)

twunde 9y ago

Facebook has reserved its rights with their license and they can decide to enforce it at any time. Personal projects should be ok, but commercial projects should involve a discussion with legal. If the company thinks it's possible that they end up in a lawsuit with FB, it won't be allowed. For those who get caught unawares, they will have to move off react if possible, or seriously consider settling.

mikekchar 9y ago
For personal projects, my interest here is in whether or not the patents license is compatible with other free software licenses (say GPLV3). That might be a consideration for some people.
- jorgemf 9y ago
  As far as I understood It is not compatible with other licenses, that is why the apache foundation doesn't allow it. (But don't ask me which licenses, I have no idea)
- kevin_b_er 9y ago
  Section 11 might be incompatible with the facebook Patent+BSD license.

geofft 9y ago

From Mark Thomas's comment on this bug: > My reading of that is if you use this code and Facebook infringes a completely unrelated patent that you own, you can't sue them for infringement without giving up this patent license. That is much broader than the language in the ALv2 which is limited to a single work. So it almost certainly doesn't affect personal projects unless you are the sort of person who files for patents as a hobby, but for a commercial project, the scenario, I think, is that if you own some patent (not even a software patent!) and you sue Facebook for it, you lose your patent rights to React. In effect, you may as well be granting Facebook a patent license to literally all your patents for use in any context, in exchange for using React. Also, it's not just Facebook: it also covers suing anyone for infringing your patent in their use of any other Facebook product or service, as well as "any party relating to" React -- so quite possibly, depending on how lawyers and judges read the license, you can't enforce your non-software patents against anyone who uses React.

tomelders 9y ago
I think this is misleading. In the event that you bring a patent infringement case against Facebook, you still have a license to use react, but you lose the patent rights that would cover you if you came up with something that infringed on a Facebook patent. Meaning that you now have to fight your case in court without any protection. You're safer with this license and the patent grant, than you are without it. The BSD license on it's own, and the MIT license don't give you any sort of patent grant at all.
- geofft 9y ago
  That depends on whether you believe that the BSD license gives you an implied patent grant - it does, after all, just say "Redistribution and use...are permitted," without saying anything specific to copyright. See also http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Implicit_patent_licence http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Implicit_patent_licence If the concept of an implicit patent license is coherent and legally meaningful (it sounds like it is), then an explicit patent license, like Facebook's, would supersede it - and so losing your rights under the explicit license would leave you worse off than relying on the implicit one. In any case, this is why people like the Apache license and the GPLv3, so you don't have to think about whether a patent license is implied. Both of those have explicit patent licenses with significantly less draconian termination clauses than Facebook's. (Obviously I am not a lawyer, otherwise I'd know better than to comment on HN about unclear areas of IP law.)