4 ms·

So this opinion almost swayed me, but the problem is that companies aren't scared of open source writers suing them. If you use project A that was written by o

So this opinion almost swayed me, but the problem is that companies aren't scared of open source writers suing them. If you use project A that was written by one or two developers in their spare time (and they included a BSD+patents) clause, would Facebook fear being sued by them? Probably not -- but new companies that get anywhere close to what Facebook does (increasingly, that's everything these days) definitely live with the real possibility of facebook suing them. In theory the "no one is able to bring patent suits against anyone because they're violating licenses" is a good outcome (mostly the no patent suits part), but it doesn't quite stand up in practice because patent suits cost money, and bigger companies can sue you longer than you can sue them. I don't want a world where MAD is the default, because the large companies carry nukes, and I carry a peashooter. I will no longer use react on any new projects.

foota 9y ago
I agree this is hypothetical, but an organization could form for enforcing the license.
- hardwaresofton 9y ago
  This is exactly what I don't want it to come to. That's just a corporate arms race, and I can promise you open source is not going to win. Instead of forming organizations to fight patent wars, just put effort towards fixing the patent problems.
true_religion 9y ago
> the problem is that companies aren't scared of open source writers suing them. They should be. Many popular open source projects are supported by a 'community' of large companies, or are invested into a widely respected foundation like Apache. Additionally, many projects that started off as simply a few developers, grow to the point that a company is founded to handle support and customization. An example of this would be Redis Labs---started by the originator of Redis. If even tiny patent trolls can be 'dangerous' to multinationals, I expect most would steer clear of declaring a patent war on the community at large. What if Postgres had a retaliatory patent clause? What if Linux did?
- hardwaresofton 9y ago
  I think copy-left is good enough. Also, you're right except for the fact that lots of very very useful projects are not backed by large companies or foundations like apache. What you describe a solution is precisely the world I don't want to live in. I don't want the MAD state of things to be held in check by large organizations -- humans kind of forget themselves in large organizations, far too easily. Redis is a great success story, but again, that organization is way way weaker than facebook. They just have more money in the bank, and MAD only works if EVERYONE has nukes. It doesn't work if one side is carrying rifles and only one side has nukes. Maybe we should fix the patent system instead -- I'm aware it's hugely nuanced, but for all the griping that tech does, surprisingly nothing has changed -- the tech companies that make it just don't seem to be trying to change the system once they're established (someone please correct me if I'm wrong).
chrisco255 9y ago
The clause states you only lose the patent rights if YOU sue Facebook for patent infringement (and only for patent infringement, not other reasons). As pointed out by Dennis Walsh in (https://medium.com/@dwalsh.sdlr/react-facebook-and-the-revokable-patent-license-why-its-a-paper-25c40c50b562 https://medium.com/@dwalsh.sdlr/react-facebook-and-the-revok...), it would take millions to bring a patent suit against Facebook.
- hardwaresofton 9y ago
  Yeah, and if Facebook DOES infringe on a patent you own, and it's a valid case? You then have to rewrite your frontend code base as fast as you can? At it's best this is like some sort of warped "you infringe on my patents and I'll infringe on yours" kind of thing, assuming MAD means it doesn't become a very-uneven suing war. This case is also bad news, because larger companies are much more capable of infringing on your patents and competing with smaller companies in a conglomerate style. Amazon is a conglomerate. Alphabet/Google is a conglomerate. Somehow, everyone in the government who manages anti-trust (whether that should be a thing is another debate), seems to be asleep at the wheel, literally everyday. Also, guess who has lots of resources to rebuild a shitty copy of ingenuous software they found online? Big corporations do. All the starry eyed CS grads who want to go work for Big Conglomerate Co. are going to be rearing to re-implement Redis in 50K LOC, but it's harder for some small company (or just random open source project) to re-build the parts of their app that used react in some other framework.
  - vonmoltke 9y ago
    > Yeah, and if Facebook DOES infringe on a patent you own, and it's a valid case? You then have to rewrite your frontend code base as fast as you can? In that case, you have two other options: * Quietly swap out your frontend before you file * Continue using React and dare Facebook to produce a patent they can actually claim This, of course, is based on the assumption that your frontend is a significant portion of your product. If your frontend is a trivial portion, then "rewrite your frontend code base as fast as you can" is also trivial. Edit: fixed formatting
  - 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

foota 9y ago

I agree this is hypothetical, but an organization could form for enforcing the license.

hardwaresofton 9y ago
This is exactly what I don't want it to come to. That's just a corporate arms race, and I can promise you open source is not going to win. Instead of forming organizations to fight patent wars, just put effort towards fixing the patent problems.

true_religion 9y ago

> the problem is that companies aren't scared of open source writers suing them. They should be. Many popular open source projects are supported by a 'community' of large companies, or are invested into a widely respected foundation like Apache. Additionally, many projects that started off as simply a few developers, grow to the point that a company is founded to handle support and customization. An example of this would be Redis Labs---started by the originator of Redis. If even tiny patent trolls can be 'dangerous' to multinationals, I expect most would steer clear of declaring a patent war on the community at large. What if Postgres had a retaliatory patent clause? What if Linux did?

hardwaresofton 9y ago
I think copy-left is good enough. Also, you're right except for the fact that lots of very very useful projects are not backed by large companies or foundations like apache. What you describe a solution is precisely the world I don't want to live in. I don't want the MAD state of things to be held in check by large organizations -- humans kind of forget themselves in large organizations, far too easily. Redis is a great success story, but again, that organization is way way weaker than facebook. They just have more money in the bank, and MAD only works if EVERYONE has nukes. It doesn't work if one side is carrying rifles and only one side has nukes. Maybe we should fix the patent system instead -- I'm aware it's hugely nuanced, but for all the griping that tech does, surprisingly nothing has changed -- the tech companies that make it just don't seem to be trying to change the system once they're established (someone please correct me if I'm wrong).

chrisco255 9y ago

The clause states you only lose the patent rights if YOU sue Facebook for patent infringement (and only for patent infringement, not other reasons). As pointed out by Dennis Walsh in (https://medium.com/@dwalsh.sdlr/react-facebook-and-the-revokable-patent-license-why-its-a-paper-25c40c50b562 https://medium.com/@dwalsh.sdlr/react-facebook-and-the-revok...), it would take millions to bring a patent suit against Facebook.

hardwaresofton 9y ago
Yeah, and if Facebook DOES infringe on a patent you own, and it's a valid case? You then have to rewrite your frontend code base as fast as you can? At it's best this is like some sort of warped "you infringe on my patents and I'll infringe on yours" kind of thing, assuming MAD means it doesn't become a very-uneven suing war. This case is also bad news, because larger companies are much more capable of infringing on your patents and competing with smaller companies in a conglomerate style. Amazon is a conglomerate. Alphabet/Google is a conglomerate. Somehow, everyone in the government who manages anti-trust (whether that should be a thing is another debate), seems to be asleep at the wheel, literally everyday. Also, guess who has lots of resources to rebuild a shitty copy of ingenuous software they found online? Big corporations do. All the starry eyed CS grads who want to go work for Big Conglomerate Co. are going to be rearing to re-implement Redis in 50K LOC, but it's harder for some small company (or just random open source project) to re-build the parts of their app that used react in some other framework.
- vonmoltke 9y ago
  > Yeah, and if Facebook DOES infringe on a patent you own, and it's a valid case? You then have to rewrite your frontend code base as fast as you can? In that case, you have two other options: * Quietly swap out your frontend before you file * Continue using React and dare Facebook to produce a patent they can actually claim This, of course, is based on the assumption that your frontend is a significant portion of your product. If your frontend is a trivial portion, then "rewrite your frontend code base as fast as you can" is also trivial. Edit: fixed formatting
- 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

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