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INAL - But this seems strange to me. The Apache license has what I see as being the same patent grant, with the same condition that if you make a claim against

INAL - But this seems strange to me. The Apache license has what I see as being the same patent grant, with the same condition that if you make a claim against them, you lose the patent grant. Apache 2.0 > 3. Grant of Patent License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted. If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed. The important bit being... > If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed. But what people seem to be missing (as far as I can tell) is that you don't lose the licence to use the software. You just lose the patent grants. But with the BSD licence alone, you lose both the patent grand AND the licence. I really don't see how the Apache 2.0 License and Facebook's BSD+Patent Grant are any different.

FRex 9y ago
I'm neither and English isn't my first language (not that legalese is even close to any sane kind of English from last 200 years..) but due to my deep interest in Free and Open software, old games reimplementations, abandonware, reverse engineers and emulation I spent quite a while reading about legal stuff. The part you said is important sounds like you lose the right to use the patent in the given software if you attempt to sue someone over patents in that software which sounds absolutely sane. In facebook's case they terminate the patent grant given to you for you trying to sue them for any patent, except a counterclaim if they sue first: https://github.com/facebook/react/commit/b8ba8c83f318b84e42933f6928f231dc0918f864 https://github.com/facebook/react/commit/b8ba8c83f318b84e429... And even that is just few years ago, RakNet that Facebook owns via Occulus is still using the old wording: https://github.com/facebookarchive/RakNet/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/facebookarchive/RakNet/blob/master/PATENT... So basically the difference boils down to the CAPS part below: Apache 2.0: we grant you use of these patents, sue anyone over one of the patents we gave you and we take that grant away. Facebook's BSD: we grant you use of these patents, sue anyone over one of the patents we gave you OR SUE US OVER ANY PATENT AT ALL and we take that grant away. Another difference is what is covered. Apache is about suing, Facebook's BSD says you can't even 'take a direct financial interest in' any of the stuff they don't want you doing.
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  Another difference is what is covered. Apache is about suing, Facebook's BSD says you can't even 'take a direct financial interest in' any of the stuff they don't want you doing. I do fully support this bit though, which is specifically to avoid that whole thing where Microsoft was bankrolling patent trolls.
  - FRex 9y ago
    This says you can't even seriously financially consider suing them or even call them out in any way over ANY of your patents. If you happen to be a ML/VR/cars company and think "oh, we use React on one tiny website that'd be cheap to rewrite and Facebook uses without paying our 42314 super expensive patents for ML and self driving cars and VR.. should we sue them?" you already are using React patents illegally because you took financial interest in patent assertion. With that wording taking out the "you (or any of your subsidiaries, corporate affiliates or agents)" part would still cover cases like bankrolling patent trolls that sue. And 'patent assertion' means: >A "Patent Assertion" is any lawsuit or other action alleging direct, indirect, or contributory infringement or inducement to infringe any patent, including a cross-claim or counterclaim. So basically, thanks to that language, being that kind of a company I mentioned above, you could write a blog post saying "WTF, we use React and Facebook uses our expensive shit for free!?!" or even a legal letter to them to stop using patents without getting a grant from you and lose your patent grant already because you are 'alleging' or 'taking financial interest' in 'alleging' or 'lawsuit'. And other users of software are only protected from you suing them over React patents like in Apache license, Facebook is protected in a special separate way from any patent lawsuit, allegation or even financial consideration of a lawsuit or allegation. This is very one sided and the reason why I immediately remembered RakNet PATENTS file I've seen back in 2014 when I got hyped over RakNet being open source is because it stuck in my mind how stupid and one sided that patent grant was.
Lazare 9y ago
The difference you're missing is that the Apache 2.0 terminates if you end up in a patent dispute related to the software. Facebook's parent grant terminates if you sue them over any patent. So hypothetically if Google released some JS frontend library under Apache 2.0, I don't lose the patent grant if I sue them for violating my company's VR patents, whereas I do lose my patent grant to React if I sue Facebook for violating my VR patents. My company happily uses React, because we don't believe that's a risk worth worrying about, but it is a difference, and it might be relevant to some.

FRex 9y ago

I'm neither and English isn't my first language (not that legalese is even close to any sane kind of English from last 200 years..) but due to my deep interest in Free and Open software, old games reimplementations, abandonware, reverse engineers and emulation I spent quite a while reading about legal stuff. The part you said is important sounds like you lose the right to use the patent in the given software if you attempt to sue someone over patents in that software which sounds absolutely sane. In facebook's case they terminate the patent grant given to you for you trying to sue them for any patent, except a counterclaim if they sue first: https://github.com/facebook/react/commit/b8ba8c83f318b84e42933f6928f231dc0918f864 https://github.com/facebook/react/commit/b8ba8c83f318b84e429... And even that is just few years ago, RakNet that Facebook owns via Occulus is still using the old wording: https://github.com/facebookarchive/RakNet/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/facebookarchive/RakNet/blob/master/PATENT... So basically the difference boils down to the CAPS part below: Apache 2.0: we grant you use of these patents, sue anyone over one of the patents we gave you and we take that grant away. Facebook's BSD: we grant you use of these patents, sue anyone over one of the patents we gave you OR SUE US OVER ANY PATENT AT ALL and we take that grant away. Another difference is what is covered. Apache is about suing, Facebook's BSD says you can't even 'take a direct financial interest in' any of the stuff they don't want you doing.

matthewmacleod 9y ago
Another difference is what is covered. Apache is about suing, Facebook's BSD says you can't even 'take a direct financial interest in' any of the stuff they don't want you doing. I do fully support this bit though, which is specifically to avoid that whole thing where Microsoft was bankrolling patent trolls.
- FRex 9y ago
  This says you can't even seriously financially consider suing them or even call them out in any way over ANY of your patents. If you happen to be a ML/VR/cars company and think "oh, we use React on one tiny website that'd be cheap to rewrite and Facebook uses without paying our 42314 super expensive patents for ML and self driving cars and VR.. should we sue them?" you already are using React patents illegally because you took financial interest in patent assertion. With that wording taking out the "you (or any of your subsidiaries, corporate affiliates or agents)" part would still cover cases like bankrolling patent trolls that sue. And 'patent assertion' means: >A "Patent Assertion" is any lawsuit or other action alleging direct, indirect, or contributory infringement or inducement to infringe any patent, including a cross-claim or counterclaim. So basically, thanks to that language, being that kind of a company I mentioned above, you could write a blog post saying "WTF, we use React and Facebook uses our expensive shit for free!?!" or even a legal letter to them to stop using patents without getting a grant from you and lose your patent grant already because you are 'alleging' or 'taking financial interest' in 'alleging' or 'lawsuit'. And other users of software are only protected from you suing them over React patents like in Apache license, Facebook is protected in a special separate way from any patent lawsuit, allegation or even financial consideration of a lawsuit or allegation. This is very one sided and the reason why I immediately remembered RakNet PATENTS file I've seen back in 2014 when I got hyped over RakNet being open source is because it stuck in my mind how stupid and one sided that patent grant was.

Lazare 9y ago

The difference you're missing is that the Apache 2.0 terminates if you end up in a patent dispute related to the software. Facebook's parent grant terminates if you sue them over any patent. So hypothetically if Google released some JS frontend library under Apache 2.0, I don't lose the patent grant if I sue them for violating my company's VR patents, whereas I do lose my patent grant to React if I sue Facebook for violating my VR patents. My company happily uses React, because we don't believe that's a risk worth worrying about, but it is a difference, and it might be relevant to some.