16 ms·

A startup founder and ex-Facebook engineer’s story of the BSD + Patents license

259 points by irfansharif 9y ago

stuaxo 9y ago
This is a great explanation and it all makes sense. Given the mess that it was born from, it makes sense for developers to think about staying away from this if building anything of consequence. It also is incompatible with free software. However there are a lot of things that are worth developing that are neither of these things and react can be a great choice there on the technical merits.
Gaelan 9y ago
[IANAL] The React license provides more rights than BSD/MIT. Period. The "oh but what if Facebook has patents" claim is just as valid as it is for any other BSD code. If you're worried about React, you should be worried about all of your BSD code from companies that are big enough to have huge patent portfolios.
- dannyw 9y ago
  No, it's not. Plain BSD has an implicit patent grant. BSD+Patents applies explicit clauses (condiions), and is less permissive than BSD. Apache asked Facebook to license React under plain BSD, and they declined.
  - ec109685 9y ago
    What court says BSD has an implicit patent grant?
TwelveNights 9y ago
After reading this article, I can see where Facebook is coming from when making these licensing changes. However, the points he makes about smaller companies feeling pain from Facebook due to patent infringement is very real too.
- matt4077 9y ago
  What patents, exactly, is Facebook infringing? And considering Facebook has one rather specific product: How would it help these companies if Facebook avoided their patented technology, unless they're trying to start a social network? And if they're starting a social network: is there anything that makes it plausible that their lack of success in unseating Facebook is due to this technology? And if they're feeling the pain, have any of them sued Facebook and won? If not: Is it because they're using React? If not: How does the patent grant make a difference then?
  - sasmithjr 9y ago
    Facebook has more than one product. They have the social network itself; a lot of work around ads, ad targeting and ad delivery; Oculus technology, both hardware and software; their efforts to bring internet to many places, etc. You can sue Facebook for infringing a patent with Oculus and they'll come after you for your use of React/GraphQL/etc.
  - TwelveNights 9y ago
    Sorry, I meant it in a future tense. I don't mean that Facebook is deliberately infringing on patents now.
Mayzie 9y ago
So, Facebook is the only company that struggles with this and come up with this arcane solution? Google and Microsoft are just as big, yet they can manage open source perfectly fine without this ridiculous licence.
- notacoward 9y ago
  > they can manage open source perfectly fine It's easy to "manage open source perfectly fine" if you just open-source less of your code, or release it without any patent grant at all. I'm not sure how much credit should be given for those non-efforts, though.
  - froweway 9y ago
    No explicit patent grant has been functionally sufficient for decades so not sure what you're saying there. What about Google and Microsoft's FOSS contributions do you consider "non-efforts"?
    - notacoward 9y ago
      > What about Google and Microsoft's FOSS contributions do you consider "non-efforts"? It's not the FOSS contributions that are non-efforts. It's the things that were never released at all. What percentage of engineers at Microsoft work on code that has been or ever will be open source? How is releasing 10% of your code with no patent grant better than releasing 20% of your code with a conditional one? Also, "no explicit patent grant has been sufficient" is no excuse for bashing a grant that has exactly that as its worst case. Any non-zero protection is still greater than zero. By way of analogy, would you yell at people on your team who you felt weren't working hard enough, then give a big pat on the back to one who played video games the whole time? Well, maybe you would, but an objective observer might think it seemed unfair. They might even wonder about what other motivations might be involved.
      - rhencke 9y ago
        So, until all (or some large quantity) of software produced by an organization is open source, any software produced by an organization that is open source should not be considered worthwhile efforts?
bdefore 9y ago
Until there is an example of a case where Facebook has abused a technology patented elsewhere and survived a lawsuit due to Patents+BSD all of this squealing is suspicious FUD. React is still a dominant tool for web technologies and anyone using this item in their checklist against it is doing the wrong homework.
- zepolen 9y ago
  Give me your banking password, I swear I will only hold it and never use it. Trust me. There has been no example of me doing it in the past!
- hajile 9y ago
  I said that for a long time and continued to say that right up to the point where Facebook said they are explicitly leaving the clause in as a weapon. The fact is that every big company named by that post undoubtedly has an expensive cross licensing agreement. The other fact is that the original react license (apache 2) defended them perfectly well, but they went out of their way to change it and further out of their way to explicitly keep it. That's not FUD. It's simple business sense to avoid complications.
  - spicyj 9y ago
    > The fact is that every big company named by that post undoubtedly has an expensive cross licensing agreement. Sorry, that's simply not true.
- solomatov 9y ago
  Today they are very nice and super profitable company. But are sure that they will be this way in 5 years?
politician 9y ago
It's fine that Facebook wants to defend itself and gain hiring benefits from launching interesting projects, but those reasons aren't sufficient to allay concerns that this license won't be weaponized against small teams with interesting technologies.
- chrisco255 9y ago
  Those small teams only need to be concerned in the event that they intend on suing Facebook for PATENT INFRINGEMENT. That's it. That's the only event that this could ever be relevant to you. Small teams should focus on building great products. If their hope is to patent some software algorithm in the hopes that they're going to make it big in a legal battle with Facebook...I mean, I suppose in that special 1 in a million case you should probably avoid Facebook open source. But you are probably going to face patent counterclaims regardless, because they own thousands of software patents. You might be accidentally violating one of them now. Who knows? Have you combed through your code base and Facebook's patent portfolio to find out? What about all the other big software companies out there? Google? Yahoo? Microsoft? Your choice of tech won't prevent you from violating broad software patents like Amazon's infamous 1-Click patent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click, for example.
  - afro88 9y ago
    The odds are much lower than 1 in a million. It’s any kind of patent. Facebook aren’t just a social media software company anymore by any means. What this means is they can infringe on your patent on say “tinder for dogs bark swipe mechanism” and they can infringe all day long knowing you would have to migrate off React Native and GraphQL before sueing them over it
    - chrisco255 9y ago
      I think your example just shows how ridiculous software patents are as a concept. Facebook's license is an attempt to prevent silly lawsuits over things like that.
chaostheory 9y ago
This is good insight for Facebook's motivation behind this license. Even before this post, most people understood why Facebook would use this license. However, it still doesn't fix its problems for 3rd parties, and it introduces bad precedents for open source in general. I can see less collaboration over time between different companies if this license ever gets popular. I could be wrong but knowing the history behind it doesn't change my opinion that this will hurt open source in the long run.
- solomatov 9y ago
  IANAL. If we take a look at Apache 2.0's patent grant: > ... 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. It seems to be more fair to me. It doesn't give any special right to Facebook or any other entity. I.e. Apache 2.0 revokes the patent grant if anybody sues for patent infringement arising out of the work. Facebook's license the patent grant if anybody sues Facebook for anything, or other parties for patent infringement arising out of the work.
tssva 9y ago
If the protection of defensive patents was really Facebook's concern this could have been addressed by using the Apache 2.0 license. The patent grant is clearly limited to its use in regards to the specific licensed work and if you file a patent suit regarding the work the grant is revoked.
- chrisco255 9y ago
  Correct, but in this case, it wouldn't have protected them from Yahoo, for example. Yahoo was suing over other, unrelated patents. Facebook had to counterclaim in order to stave off the lawsuit.
owens99 9y ago
> it’s not clear how much switching to another React-like library like Preact or Vue would help; you need Facebook’s patent licenses anyway — in the eyes of the law — for any library that uses data structures, algorithms, or techniques patented by Facebook. Can someone clarify what the author means here?
- paulddraper 9y ago
  The author is saying Facebook's React patent would cover Preact and Vue. Which is nonsense because there's really nothing patentable in React. --- The real concern is using React's license has conditions on other patents. But this is irrelevant for Preact, etc.
- hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
  Patents protect implementation techniques, not actual code like copyright does. Since something like Preact is API compatible with React, if there are any patents that cover functionality in React, they would also likely be needed by Preact, so switching to Preact wouldn't save you anything it terms of patent defense.
  - owens99 9y ago
    Thanks for this. Just to make sure I am getting it: Does this mean if you never used React, but use Preact or Vue that Facebook can still countersue you in the same way if you used React?
    - cyphar 9y ago
      If there is a patent that covers what preact or vue do, then yes. A patent on "react" would not use the term react (it might not even mention JavaScript or web browsers), and it applies to any implementation of a particular concept. So if some aspect of React's DOM handling is patented then anything that implemented DOM handling (patents are a bit more complicated but bear with me) would be a patent violation and any user of the code could be sued. You can also be sued even if you are just a user of a project that uses preact.
tjpnz 9y ago
Where I work we've already been given the "don't use React" talk from legal. I'm curious as to how many others out there are getting the same advice at their day job.
- monochromatic 9y ago
  Did they say why?
- Macha 9y ago
  Yeah, OpenJDK is already on our "do not contribute" blacklist for issues with their CLA, so I wouldn't be surprised to see react in the same list soon.
RyanShook 9y ago
I completely respect a company's decision not to open source software. But to add restrictions of any kind to an open source project means it really isn't.
ljcrabs 9y ago
Finally some context. Not just what-if's, but the context of how facebook has acted historically. Great read. I will continue to use React.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
khuey 9y ago
Yet more BS from Facebook (and it's surroundings) on BSD+Patent. This piece does not mention anywhere the fundamental asymmetry of the patent grant. First, Facebook grants you a patent license only in conjunction with the software. You are not granted a license to use a patent that React requires in some completely different piece of software. The only thing this patent grant prevents Facebook from doing defensively is countersuing the users of software that Facebook gave them for using the software that Facebook gave them. Unless that is Facebook's idea of defense, the patent grant (without the retaliation clause) does not impair the defensive capabilities of Facebook's patent portfolio in any way. Second, the patent grant terminates if you (first) assert any patent claims against Facebook whatsoever. So in exchange for a very narrow grant of a handful of patents, you in effect agree not to assert any patent claims against Facebook for any reason, even if they're totally unrelated to the software that Facebook's patent grant came with. IMO this sort of asymmetric grant of rights is a very bad development for open source. It's also quite disconcerting that Facebook (and it's surroundings, I realize this guy is no longer employed there) never acknowledges this even though they're surely aware of this. If Facebook were content with merely not increasing their exposure to patent problems through open source the Apache style patent grant would have sufficed. Instead they have decided to militarize their open source projects in the service of decreasing their patent exposure in completely unrelated areas.
- nrser 9y ago
  Many of the top-dollar patents in FB's chest are likely very broad / fundamental to the modern web. If you implicitly or explicitly retain a license to use whatever's needed for React, etc. than you likely have a decent foothold to say you have a license to many of those key fundamental patents, significantly impacting FB's legal position, and these battles are all about position. It's my "not a lawyer but spent way too much time in legal negotiations" understanding that if you sue FB for patent infringement then you lose license to the patents you get in the BSD+PATENTS, not the software. This would prevent you from saying "well, I've got a license to those patents because I've got a license to use React" (including a possibly implicit one under standard BSD/OSL). This agreements says that at that point, you can no longer assume you have a license to whatever patents could be construed to coverer React, etc., which could be all sorts of wonky over-arching crap from the 90's that FB bought. The reason you is your whole org and patents is everything is because it would probably be really damn hard and expensive and risky to try to slice it finer. Don't take this as an endorsement of the license. I'm still not sure what I make of it. FB has done a poor job of communicating about their motivations and indented mechanism, leading many to suspect treachery, and that's not an unreasonable position, but from I can kinda start to see where they may be coming from.
electriclove 9y ago
Why is Facebook ok with changing the license on RocksDB but not React?
- linkmotif 9y ago
  That's what I've been wondering.
- purpleidea 9y ago
  I think you're assuming the left part of FB is in perfect coordination with the right. (Where "left" and "right" are different arbitrary parts of the company.)
- timv 9y ago
  Two possibilities come to mind (and they can both be true). 1. Somewhere in FB's patent portfolio is a patent that is broad and vague enough to cover some part of React, so the patent grant/revoke clause has meaning and value. Changing the license would mean that they were giving up something that they value, and they don't want to do that. That might not be true for RocksDB, in which changing the license is relatively low cost. 2. React is more widely used and more easy to detect (public facing websites) so the patent clause offers protection against a wider range of potential threats. Lots of sites use React, or react-like libraries. Since the purpose of the patent clause is as a protection againt offensive patent suits, they seem to think (probably with good reason) that React is a worthwhile shield that they don't want to give up. For RocksDB they feel that balance is different.
  - sewen 9y ago
    My feeling is that #2 is the reason. Also, a lot of Apache projects embed RocksDB and would effectively be stopped (until a suitable replacement would come up) had they not changed the license.
- boxerab 9y ago
  By the way, they also recently changed the license on ZSTD compression codec to dual BSD / GPL v2, after complaints by user community.
nmjohn 9y ago
There is something I don't understand about the HN comments when the React license comes up. Whenever something about software patents in general comes up, the majority of commenters seem to condemn them - at a minimum in their offensive usage. And a vast majority of commenters seem to be opposed to them at least to some degree. So if as a general position you do not support the offensive use of software patents, why does the react license matter _at all_ to you? The only time it would matter would be if you would sue facebook for violating your patents. Am I not correctly understanding the license? Does it apply any other time?
- rocky1138 9y ago
  This is fair to say when working on your own projects as you set the rules. You can pick any software you want. The trouble is when you go to implement some of this stuff at work and get pushback from your team or higher-ups about the licenses for the software.
  - chii 9y ago
    > get pushback from your team or higher-ups about the licenses for the software. how is this different from pushback on (any) other issue?
  - matt4077 9y ago
    Why does the opinion that patents on software are wrong, never help anybody but patent trolls, and slow down progress not scale to larger companies? How could an opinion that's right for a person not possibly also be held by something larger? Empirically, almost no large software companies have ever used patents offensively. They have repeatedly spoken out against the very idea of patentability for software (and "business methods").
    - zaphirplane 9y ago
      MS vs device markers using dos
- derefr 9y ago
rectang 9y ago
The issue of not wanting open source contributions to inadvertently license valuable patents is not unique to Facebook. Qualcomm reorganized itself several years ago so that their employees who interact with open source would be assigned to one corporate entity while all sensitive patents would be held by a separate corporate entity. Other large organizations muddle through with closer oversight of the open source teams by the legal team than either would like. It is a difficult problem to solve.
talkingtab 9y ago
Maybe there is a way to make this a little more fair. Every open source project could add a patent clause that said "If you license your software with a patent clause and invoke that clause against anyone, you lose your right to use this software". I know, I know, tit for tat. On the other hand FB wants to be part of the open source community they should do it in a fair and reasonable way, and if they need to "protection" maybe everyone else needs it too.
froweway 9y ago
All of this just poisons the water. I know people are looking for justifications for their favorite framework, but if Facebook wants to trojan horse FOSS with asymmetric privileges, it should just sell React licenses and call it a day.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ThisCourtIsAnal 9y ago
This discussion just goes to show again the extent to which the tech community allowed itself to be gaslighted into accepting that: 1. Anything about react is patentable. 2. Licensing of unspecified patents is a thing. 3. Licensing of software without disclosing related patents held by the author does not invalidate those patents on the basis of bad faith acting alone. In what obscene legal reality does adding a patent grant that can be revoked in certain circumstances puts the licensee in a worse position than a license that does not mention patents at all ?
- chii 9y ago
  > a patent grant if you called it a patent 'clause' - rather than a grant - then does it make more sense? More clauses == more legal conditions. The fact is that patents are obsurd in software. It should be treated like in the fashion industry - notice how clothing design is _not_ patentable, and the fashion industry has not an iota of being un-innovative or impeded! In fact, the very reason of being able to make any design copy in fashion leads to the large proliferation of innovations, as each designer tries to one-up another.
  - ThisCourtIsAnal 9y ago
    Yes to my non-lawyerish understanding making it a clause in the BSD license would be different - it would no longer be a BSD license but rather a new (non OSI) license containing provisions regarding patents. I agree that software patents are evil but then so are many other parts of the modern legal system, but even with them it feels that what facebook (and other companies) are doing shouldn't have any legal standing - see my comment down the original thread.
    - chii 9y ago
      > it would no longer be a BSD license and i'd argue that the license that facebook is using _is_ indeed a new license! It's BSD plus something added to it! Unless the end user has the choice to not take the patent clause ("grant") as part of their license. IANAL, so i dont know if it is possible to cherry pick like this.
kjsthree 9y ago
> As part of the patent grant, you’d have to stop using Facebook open source upon claiming patent infringement. IANAL but I don't believe this is correct. If I'm using React and I decide to sue Facebook for infringing some other software patents I hold, I lose the patent grant for any potential patents Facebook might hold concerning React. Which they could go after me with if they do indeed hold such patents. There's nothing proactively forcing me off React. I just don't see anything but good from this BSD+patent grant situation. It lessens software patent litigation in general and lets me know I'm safe from Facebook suing me specially. It seems fantastic!
- abritinthebay 9y ago
  Indeed. I seems to me that all of this noice is due to programmers thinking they understand basic law. They don’t. Most developers don’t understand basic copyright, let alone licenses and grants.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- chaostheory 9y ago
  What happens when those patents are no longer potential and have been granted to Facebook?
  - Lazare 9y ago
    A patent application must be filed within 1 year of public disclosure or its barred, and React has been out for years. And any pending application filed during that 1 year window would be visible now, so... ...nothing is going to happen. There's no submarine patents possible here. (...from Facebook, anyhow.)
    - chaostheory 9y ago
      This license isn't exclusive to React. Assuming that you're correct and Facebook's legal team made a mistake, what happens when everything is filed correctly with another project? What happens when another company uses this? I can't help but feel that the big picture is being missed. If Facebook's open source projects don't lose momentum, other companies will be tempted to do follow
halfnibble 9y ago
All of these feel good stories about the Facebook license will immediately become null and void the moment they actually use it. Like an active volcano erupting for the first time in recent history, people will run away and never look back. Besides, React is not that great. Mixing view and controller, and incremental DOM is better anyway.
- halfnibble 9y ago
  Are downvoters not liking the volcano analogy for the FB license, or the critique of ReactJS?
yeukhon 9y ago
My take is most people are worrying too much. I see lawsuits against big tech corp either comes from patent trolls or other competitors at the same scale. Being careful and prepare for future "do evil" is great. The only reason we can't trust patent license is because patent trolls are ruining the whole patent system, and the clauses in many patent licenses are too complicated to be trusted IMO.
- kevmo 9y ago
  A lot of evil in the world has stemmed from people not worrying. I am glad our community is worrying.
  - yeukhon 9y ago
    Worrying too much is going to hurt the community as well. Worrying that your friends are spying on you, worrying your family will leave you, worrying the world will come to an end. How much can you worry?
vijaybritto 9y ago
Even though Facebook's points are valid from their perspective, I think that they are setting a bad precedent which can be utilized by all the powerful corps if this picks up steam! Is this the only way to stop a patent troll? Or does FB want others to think harder before suing?
imron 9y ago
> To my knowledge, Facebook has never proactively sued anyone for infringing its patents. Past performance is not an indicator of future outcomes.
dottrap 9y ago
How can you tell if Apple is using React for their documentation page?
- matt4077 9y ago
  Right click -> view source?
  - dottrap 9y ago
    I did that, but I don't know what to look for. I searched for React but it didn't find anything. The article claims Apple uses React. I wanted to verify that claim.
- dikaiosune 9y ago
  The react devtools extensions for Chrome usually shows me when a page is using react.
- jameside 9y ago
  The React developer tools usually can tell if a site is using React and shows you the component hierarchy. Screenshot of https://developer.apple.com/documentation/ https://developer.apple.com/documentation/ taken today: https://i.imgur.com/yF1Q3uY.png https://i.imgur.com/yF1Q3uY.png.
ThisCourtIsAnal 9y ago
<not a lawyer> In particular my reading is that the BSD license alone gives anyone an irrevocable right to use, modify and redistribute the software providing only the conditions in that license are met. So one can either ignore the PATENTS file altogether or to formally fork the repo while omitting this file and it would be as if that file never existed. Facebooks' (et al.) claim that these two files together constitute the governing license should be challenged as fraudulent - if they want to relicense react under a new license that contains terms regarding patents they can do so but the last revision before that would still be BSD licensed and the community can fork it. </still not a lawyer>
the100rabh 9y ago
Sorry for my ignorance, but has Facebook written anywhere the patents its giving away with React ? Are they really worthy of patents ?
skrebbel 9y ago
A BSD license without a patent grant gives you less safety than a BSD license with a bad patent grant. If you're not ok with Facebook's BSD+Patents, then you shouldn't be ok with BSD alone either. There are licenses with a decent papent grant (notably, Apache) but BSD and MIT aren't among them. If you're all up in arms about Facebook's OSS licensing and at the same time use OSS that is licensed without a patent grant at all then you're a hypocrite.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
yladiz 9y ago
One thing I think would lay to rest a lot of this issue would be if Facebook would just explicitly state, "We have patents for React," or, "We hold no patents for React." There's a lot of misinformation going around, and some people say that there have been searches and found nothing, others have said there are patents, so it's very confusing. My understanding is that Facebook doesn't hold any patents for React or technologies that React uses, but I don't know for sure because I haven't seen it from a qualified source and Facebook hasn't said anything. The other thing I think would help is if Facebook made is crystal clear the meaning of the patent grant and explained it in plain English, because they currently aren't doing a good job at explaining it as evidenced by people always saying different things about it. Their relative silence and opaqueness around this issue only causes confusion and distrust of their OSS work, even if it is good. The main reason that I don't like the patent grant isn't because of React specifically, it's because Facebook revokes ANY patents if you sue them for patent infringement, even ones unconcerned with the technology you're suing them for. This is why I prefer OSS licenses with explicit patent grants better, because they're worded in such a way that the only patent grants you lose are the ones that concern the technology under license (see Apache 2.0).
- JoshMnem 9y ago
  It isn't just React -- the PATENTS file is in most Facebook repos.
  - yladiz 9y ago
    True, but most people are concerned about React since that's the technology that most people only use.
    - JoshMnem 9y ago
      If most people are only concerned about React, then they aren't paying attention.
guelo 9y ago
I get that it seems scary for an innovative startup to have facebook steal your intellectual property just because of a javascript library you're using. But I am of the opinion that patents are worthless to small startups anyway so it's not much of a concern. Until a startup starts getting to unicorn status patents are basically useless. If a tech giant wants to blatantly steal your idea they will and their wall of lawyers will mean you can do absolutely nothing unless you can convince a VC that a legal fight is the best way to blow through millions of dollars.
mplewis 9y ago
"To my knowledge, Facebook has never proactively sued anyone for infringing its patents." That's not a good enough reason for developers or startups to give away legal power like that. Forgive me if I don't feel like waiting for them to turn evil.
- jameside 9y ago
  Hi, author of the post here. This quote isn't a reason to agree to the license. Agreeing to the Facebook BSD+Patents license doesn't rest on the assumption that Facebook will continue a defensive stance on patents. It gives you rights or mostly preserves your rights if Facebook were to proactively claim patent infringement. From my reading: 1. The patent grant specifically gives you patent licenses for Facebook open source, so Facebook couldn't rightfully claim patent infringement for the licensed patents. 2. The grant also says if Facebook were to proactively sue you for infringing its patents, you'd keep its patent licenses even if you were to countersue. (Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, nor is this legal advice.)
  - politician 9y ago
    Hi James, it looks like you've invested effort in the Expo SDK via expo.io to promote React, but aren't currently monetizing it nor do you have any patents under Expo that may be at risk. I understand that you're in YC S16, but the scenario below assumes you haven't received any investment yet. Let's suppose that Expo SDK 2 has valuable IP that you've protected with a patent, and that you are now seeking investment so that you can grow a business around it. It works! Investors are excited, customers love it, and business is growing! Well, until Facebook comes around and releases the Fxpo SDK with a large media launch at F10. It contains some of the same technology you added to Expo SDK 2, perhaps even some of that patented technology that enticed your investors. Wow, that sucks. So you call up your lawyers and setup a meeting with Facebook. At the meeting Facebook says, "Tut tut tut. James, you can't sue us for patent infringement because we'll pull your license to use React. James, your entire business is built around React and it might cost, what, $1M USD to replace it with Angular. And how long might that take? Months? Years?! James, we see that you're a smart businessman. Look, we'll buy your company for $200,000. Think it over." What will you do? Sell Expo Inc to Facebook for pennies, or fight them in court with the lawyer's fees and the loss of use of your money making product? Will you have enough cash to cover the gap? Will your investors, anxious to get their 5% return over the 10 year life of the fund, stick behind you or will they write this one off? When you look back at the time you lost to dealing with this crap, wouldn't you have rather just used Angular or Ember or... Elm?
bad_user 9y ago
The post describes Facebook's motivation for their license, but personally, I don't care about their motivation, but about the fact that their license is anti-Open Source, anti-Free Software. There's actually a big difference between the patents grant of a license like Apache 2.0 and FB's license and I quote (from Apache 2.0): > "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" In other words the patents grant and its revocation is made explicitly in the context of "The Work" being licensed. So you can still sue a company like Facebook for unrelated projects and still be protected by the license. By contrast Facebook's PATENTS license says that: > "The license granted here under will terminate, automatically and without notice, if you (or any of your subsidiaries, corporate affiliates or agents) initiate directly or indirectly, or take a direct financial interest in, any Patent Assertion: (i) against Facebook or any of its subsidiaries or corporate affiliates ..." Let me spell this out for you: 1. if Facebook infringes your IP, but you happen to use React, then you can't sue them without also risk infringing on their React-related IP and be counter-sued for it 2. their PATENTS creates a unidirectional relationship; when Facebook accepts your contributions, they are protected because MIT / BSD are said to have an "implicit patents grant" (which supposedly works in the US) due to the estoppel principle Btw, Microsoft is taking steps to do what Facebook is doing as well. See for example how they are switching from Apache 2.0 to MIT and the disingenuous way they are communicating the change: https://github.com/Microsoft/visualfsharp/issues/3440 https://github.com/Microsoft/visualfsharp/issues/3440 But folks, this is not how Open Source or Free Software is supposed to work. When you release something as Open Source, you need to allow others to use your work as they wish (Freedom 0, or in OSI parlance, no discrimination against fields of endeavor). Patent-encumbered software is NOT Open Source or Free Software.
juiyout 9y ago
It is interesting that so many people preface their comments with IANAL. Isn't it that one is not a lawyer until proven otherwise?
- vog 9y ago
  Not only that. In case an actual lawyer comments, they often start with something like "IAAL, but I'm not your lawyer". Because even their opinion is only to be trusted if they did an exhaustive investigation on the topic, which is a huge amount of work that they won't be able to do unless they are paid for it.
Isofarro 9y ago
Replace "Yahoo" with "Microsoft", and "Facebook" with "Yahoo", and you have basically the same justification given to me as a Yahoo employee to patent my (company internal) hack-day ideas. The engineering manager responsible said Yahoo would only use patents as a defensive measure, to defend themselves against patent threats from other companies. Same promises, same logic. Two years later Yahoo launched their software patent action against Facebook. Software patents can only be used offensively. Because their defensive capability is limited to the threat of using them offensively. If there is no substance to the threat they are useless. So the value of software patents rests solely on their offensive capability.
- nebabyte 9y ago
  "The best defense..."
- bodegajed 9y ago
  An investment of $550 million that is only "for defensive purposes only" is BS. Company policies change all the time especially if a new market competitor emerges. Here's a question though. Let's say you're a startup investor and you have a choice to acquire one startup and one startup uses react and one uses vue.js both have stable apps and both have the same revenue which one would you choose.
  - dayjah 9y ago
    Generally M&A involves due diligence; which involves assessing the business and the technology. It aims to summarize assets and liabilities. It would surprise me significantly if a viable product was not acquired because of a technology choice; a viable product rarely hinges on one piece of technology -- the acquirer is likely to make it a goal of the acquired company to change some tech (react-> some equivalent) if they really view this as a significant liability. IANAL :) but was once acqui-hired by a patent troll.
- m12k 9y ago
  Software patents are the nuclear weapons of the software industry. If you don't have them, you're at the mercy of those who do. But even if you get them with deterrence in mind, it can still be used offensively - and if it falls into the hands of someone with nothing to lose (a terrorist group with no homeland/patent troll, aka non-practising entity, hence immune to countersuits) none of the deterrence works. In short we'd all be better off if they just didn't exist
jlebrech 9y ago
It makes a lot of sense, it costs a lot of money to hire and fire. Hire less by automating. Fire less by retraining staff.
tomelders 9y ago
The real problem is Software patents. They do nothing but harm. Get rid.
scarlexi 9y ago
really
lowbloodsugar 9y ago
IANAL but the patent grant seems independent of the BSD License. React is BSD licensed. In addition, Facebook has provided a patent grant that applies under certain conditions. The license for React says that Facebook has given me permission to use it. It doesn't seem that they can then sue me over patents related to the code, because they've just explicitly said I can use it. If I sue Facebook over patents, then the patent grant no longer applies. But the BSD License does.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jbverschoor 9y ago
Patents were created to protect an inventor. Facebook does not need to protect any inventions, because they are so big and powerful. Patents can only hurt them. If you have such a monopoly, only legal protection would protect you.
alecco 9y ago
Nonsense. Patent trolls don't use Facebook open source projects. Either they are completely dedicated to law or they are giants with their own code (e.g. Yahoo/IBM/Microsoft in the article) This is the excuse. Facebook wants to dominate the small companies who might threaten their business model with patents on future technologies.
weddpros 9y ago
When I learnt about it, I thought "Facebook wants to kill patent laws" which I believe is a good thing. What if Facebook starts a foundation where every member makes the same kind of agreement. "Sue one of us over patents, we'll all withdraw our patent grants from you". That might end the patent craziness. This hockey stick (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent#/media/File:US_patents_1790-2008.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent#/media/File:US_patents_...) shows the problem with patents clearly: what worked 200 years ago can't work the same today. The world is moving much faster than ever, yet patents are still granted for very long times. At this rate, how can you expect to NOT infringe on a patent? Everybody's paying huge sums to lawyers to play what has become a null-sum game in the end. I think Facebook illustrates this: "sue me for infringement, and I'll do my best to show you're infringing too". Null-sum game.

259 points by irfansharif 9y ago

This is a great explanation and it all makes sense. Given the mess that it was born from, it makes sense for developers to think about staying away from this if building anything of consequence. It also is incompatible with free software. However there are a lot of things that are worth developing that are neither of these things and react can be a great choice there on the technical merits.

Gaelan 9y ago

[IANAL] The React license provides more rights than BSD/MIT. Period. The "oh but what if Facebook has patents" claim is just as valid as it is for any other BSD code. If you're worried about React, you should be worried about all of your BSD code from companies that are big enough to have huge patent portfolios.

dannyw 9y ago
No, it's not. Plain BSD has an implicit patent grant. BSD+Patents applies explicit clauses (condiions), and is less permissive than BSD. Apache asked Facebook to license React under plain BSD, and they declined.
- ec109685 9y ago
  What court says BSD has an implicit patent grant?

TwelveNights 9y ago

After reading this article, I can see where Facebook is coming from when making these licensing changes. However, the points he makes about smaller companies feeling pain from Facebook due to patent infringement is very real too.

matt4077 9y ago
What patents, exactly, is Facebook infringing? And considering Facebook has one rather specific product: How would it help these companies if Facebook avoided their patented technology, unless they're trying to start a social network? And if they're starting a social network: is there anything that makes it plausible that their lack of success in unseating Facebook is due to this technology? And if they're feeling the pain, have any of them sued Facebook and won? If not: Is it because they're using React? If not: How does the patent grant make a difference then?
- sasmithjr 9y ago
  Facebook has more than one product. They have the social network itself; a lot of work around ads, ad targeting and ad delivery; Oculus technology, both hardware and software; their efforts to bring internet to many places, etc. You can sue Facebook for infringing a patent with Oculus and they'll come after you for your use of React/GraphQL/etc.
- TwelveNights 9y ago
  Sorry, I meant it in a future tense. I don't mean that Facebook is deliberately infringing on patents now.

Mayzie 9y ago

So, Facebook is the only company that struggles with this and come up with this arcane solution? Google and Microsoft are just as big, yet they can manage open source perfectly fine without this ridiculous licence.

notacoward 9y ago
> they can manage open source perfectly fine It's easy to "manage open source perfectly fine" if you just open-source less of your code, or release it without any patent grant at all. I'm not sure how much credit should be given for those non-efforts, though.
- froweway 9y ago
  No explicit patent grant has been functionally sufficient for decades so not sure what you're saying there. What about Google and Microsoft's FOSS contributions do you consider "non-efforts"?
  - notacoward 9y ago
    > What about Google and Microsoft's FOSS contributions do you consider "non-efforts"? It's not the FOSS contributions that are non-efforts. It's the things that were never released at all. What percentage of engineers at Microsoft work on code that has been or ever will be open source? How is releasing 10% of your code with no patent grant better than releasing 20% of your code with a conditional one? Also, "no explicit patent grant has been sufficient" is no excuse for bashing a grant that has exactly that as its worst case. Any non-zero protection is still greater than zero. By way of analogy, would you yell at people on your team who you felt weren't working hard enough, then give a big pat on the back to one who played video games the whole time? Well, maybe you would, but an objective observer might think it seemed unfair. They might even wonder about what other motivations might be involved.
    - rhencke 9y ago
      So, until all (or some large quantity) of software produced by an organization is open source, any software produced by an organization that is open source should not be considered worthwhile efforts?

bdefore 9y ago

Until there is an example of a case where Facebook has abused a technology patented elsewhere and survived a lawsuit due to Patents+BSD all of this squealing is suspicious FUD. React is still a dominant tool for web technologies and anyone using this item in their checklist against it is doing the wrong homework.

zepolen 9y ago
Give me your banking password, I swear I will only hold it and never use it. Trust me. There has been no example of me doing it in the past!
hajile 9y ago
I said that for a long time and continued to say that right up to the point where Facebook said they are explicitly leaving the clause in as a weapon. The fact is that every big company named by that post undoubtedly has an expensive cross licensing agreement. The other fact is that the original react license (apache 2) defended them perfectly well, but they went out of their way to change it and further out of their way to explicitly keep it. That's not FUD. It's simple business sense to avoid complications.
- spicyj 9y ago
  > The fact is that every big company named by that post undoubtedly has an expensive cross licensing agreement. Sorry, that's simply not true.
solomatov 9y ago
Today they are very nice and super profitable company. But are sure that they will be this way in 5 years?

politician 9y ago

It's fine that Facebook wants to defend itself and gain hiring benefits from launching interesting projects, but those reasons aren't sufficient to allay concerns that this license won't be weaponized against small teams with interesting technologies.

chrisco255 9y ago
Those small teams only need to be concerned in the event that they intend on suing Facebook for PATENT INFRINGEMENT. That's it. That's the only event that this could ever be relevant to you. Small teams should focus on building great products. If their hope is to patent some software algorithm in the hopes that they're going to make it big in a legal battle with Facebook...I mean, I suppose in that special 1 in a million case you should probably avoid Facebook open source. But you are probably going to face patent counterclaims regardless, because they own thousands of software patents. You might be accidentally violating one of them now. Who knows? Have you combed through your code base and Facebook's patent portfolio to find out? What about all the other big software companies out there? Google? Yahoo? Microsoft? Your choice of tech won't prevent you from violating broad software patents like Amazon's infamous 1-Click patent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click, for example.
- afro88 9y ago
  The odds are much lower than 1 in a million. It’s any kind of patent. Facebook aren’t just a social media software company anymore by any means. What this means is they can infringe on your patent on say “tinder for dogs bark swipe mechanism” and they can infringe all day long knowing you would have to migrate off React Native and GraphQL before sueing them over it
  - chrisco255 9y ago
    I think your example just shows how ridiculous software patents are as a concept. Facebook's license is an attempt to prevent silly lawsuits over things like that.

chaostheory 9y ago

This is good insight for Facebook's motivation behind this license. Even before this post, most people understood why Facebook would use this license. However, it still doesn't fix its problems for 3rd parties, and it introduces bad precedents for open source in general. I can see less collaboration over time between different companies if this license ever gets popular. I could be wrong but knowing the history behind it doesn't change my opinion that this will hurt open source in the long run.

solomatov 9y ago
IANAL. If we take a look at Apache 2.0's patent grant: > ... 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. It seems to be more fair to me. It doesn't give any special right to Facebook or any other entity. I.e. Apache 2.0 revokes the patent grant if anybody sues for patent infringement arising out of the work. Facebook's license the patent grant if anybody sues Facebook for anything, or other parties for patent infringement arising out of the work.

tssva 9y ago

If the protection of defensive patents was really Facebook's concern this could have been addressed by using the Apache 2.0 license. The patent grant is clearly limited to its use in regards to the specific licensed work and if you file a patent suit regarding the work the grant is revoked.

chrisco255 9y ago
Correct, but in this case, it wouldn't have protected them from Yahoo, for example. Yahoo was suing over other, unrelated patents. Facebook had to counterclaim in order to stave off the lawsuit.

owens99 9y ago

> it’s not clear how much switching to another React-like library like Preact or Vue would help; you need Facebook’s patent licenses anyway — in the eyes of the law — for any library that uses data structures, algorithms, or techniques patented by Facebook. Can someone clarify what the author means here?

paulddraper 9y ago
The author is saying Facebook's React patent would cover Preact and Vue. Which is nonsense because there's really nothing patentable in React. --- The real concern is using React's license has conditions on other patents. But this is irrelevant for Preact, etc.
hn_throwaway_99 9y ago
Patents protect implementation techniques, not actual code like copyright does. Since something like Preact is API compatible with React, if there are any patents that cover functionality in React, they would also likely be needed by Preact, so switching to Preact wouldn't save you anything it terms of patent defense.
- owens99 9y ago
  Thanks for this. Just to make sure I am getting it: Does this mean if you never used React, but use Preact or Vue that Facebook can still countersue you in the same way if you used React?
  - cyphar 9y ago
    If there is a patent that covers what preact or vue do, then yes. A patent on "react" would not use the term react (it might not even mention JavaScript or web browsers), and it applies to any implementation of a particular concept. So if some aspect of React's DOM handling is patented then anything that implemented DOM handling (patents are a bit more complicated but bear with me) would be a patent violation and any user of the code could be sued. You can also be sued even if you are just a user of a project that uses preact.

tjpnz 9y ago

Where I work we've already been given the "don't use React" talk from legal. I'm curious as to how many others out there are getting the same advice at their day job.

monochromatic 9y ago
Did they say why?
Macha 9y ago
Yeah, OpenJDK is already on our "do not contribute" blacklist for issues with their CLA, so I wouldn't be surprised to see react in the same list soon.

RyanShook 9y ago

I completely respect a company's decision not to open source software. But to add restrictions of any kind to an open source project means it really isn't.

ljcrabs 9y ago

Finally some context. Not just what-if's, but the context of how facebook has acted historically. Great read. I will continue to use React.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

khuey 9y ago

Yet more BS from Facebook (and it's surroundings) on BSD+Patent. This piece does not mention anywhere the fundamental asymmetry of the patent grant. First, Facebook grants you a patent license only in conjunction with the software. You are not granted a license to use a patent that React requires in some completely different piece of software. The only thing this patent grant prevents Facebook from doing defensively is countersuing the users of software that Facebook gave them for using the software that Facebook gave them. Unless that is Facebook's idea of defense, the patent grant (without the retaliation clause) does not impair the defensive capabilities of Facebook's patent portfolio in any way. Second, the patent grant terminates if you (first) assert any patent claims against Facebook whatsoever. So in exchange for a very narrow grant of a handful of patents, you in effect agree not to assert any patent claims against Facebook for any reason, even if they're totally unrelated to the software that Facebook's patent grant came with. IMO this sort of asymmetric grant of rights is a very bad development for open source. It's also quite disconcerting that Facebook (and it's surroundings, I realize this guy is no longer employed there) never acknowledges this even though they're surely aware of this. If Facebook were content with merely not increasing their exposure to patent problems through open source the Apache style patent grant would have sufficed. Instead they have decided to militarize their open source projects in the service of decreasing their patent exposure in completely unrelated areas.

nrser 9y ago
Many of the top-dollar patents in FB's chest are likely very broad / fundamental to the modern web. If you implicitly or explicitly retain a license to use whatever's needed for React, etc. than you likely have a decent foothold to say you have a license to many of those key fundamental patents, significantly impacting FB's legal position, and these battles are all about position. It's my "not a lawyer but spent way too much time in legal negotiations" understanding that if you sue FB for patent infringement then you lose license to the patents you get in the BSD+PATENTS, not the software. This would prevent you from saying "well, I've got a license to those patents because I've got a license to use React" (including a possibly implicit one under standard BSD/OSL). This agreements says that at that point, you can no longer assume you have a license to whatever patents could be construed to coverer React, etc., which could be all sorts of wonky over-arching crap from the 90's that FB bought. The reason you is your whole org and patents is everything is because it would probably be really damn hard and expensive and risky to try to slice it finer. Don't take this as an endorsement of the license. I'm still not sure what I make of it. FB has done a poor job of communicating about their motivations and indented mechanism, leading many to suspect treachery, and that's not an unreasonable position, but from I can kinda start to see where they may be coming from.

electriclove 9y ago

Why is Facebook ok with changing the license on RocksDB but not React?

linkmotif 9y ago
That's what I've been wondering.
purpleidea 9y ago
I think you're assuming the left part of FB is in perfect coordination with the right. (Where "left" and "right" are different arbitrary parts of the company.)
timv 9y ago
Two possibilities come to mind (and they can both be true). 1. Somewhere in FB's patent portfolio is a patent that is broad and vague enough to cover some part of React, so the patent grant/revoke clause has meaning and value. Changing the license would mean that they were giving up something that they value, and they don't want to do that. That might not be true for RocksDB, in which changing the license is relatively low cost. 2. React is more widely used and more easy to detect (public facing websites) so the patent clause offers protection against a wider range of potential threats. Lots of sites use React, or react-like libraries. Since the purpose of the patent clause is as a protection againt offensive patent suits, they seem to think (probably with good reason) that React is a worthwhile shield that they don't want to give up. For RocksDB they feel that balance is different.
- sewen 9y ago
  My feeling is that #2 is the reason. Also, a lot of Apache projects embed RocksDB and would effectively be stopped (until a suitable replacement would come up) had they not changed the license.
boxerab 9y ago
By the way, they also recently changed the license on ZSTD compression codec to dual BSD / GPL v2, after complaints by user community.

nmjohn 9y ago

There is something I don't understand about the HN comments when the React license comes up. Whenever something about software patents in general comes up, the majority of commenters seem to condemn them - at a minimum in their offensive usage. And a vast majority of commenters seem to be opposed to them at least to some degree. So if as a general position you do not support the offensive use of software patents, why does the react license matter _at all_ to you? The only time it would matter would be if you would sue facebook for violating your patents. Am I not correctly understanding the license? Does it apply any other time?

rocky1138 9y ago
This is fair to say when working on your own projects as you set the rules. You can pick any software you want. The trouble is when you go to implement some of this stuff at work and get pushback from your team or higher-ups about the licenses for the software.
- chii 9y ago
  > get pushback from your team or higher-ups about the licenses for the software. how is this different from pushback on (any) other issue?
- matt4077 9y ago
  Why does the opinion that patents on software are wrong, never help anybody but patent trolls, and slow down progress not scale to larger companies? How could an opinion that's right for a person not possibly also be held by something larger? Empirically, almost no large software companies have ever used patents offensively. They have repeatedly spoken out against the very idea of patentability for software (and "business methods").
  - zaphirplane 9y ago
    MS vs device markers using dos
derefr 9y ago

rectang 9y ago

The issue of not wanting open source contributions to inadvertently license valuable patents is not unique to Facebook. Qualcomm reorganized itself several years ago so that their employees who interact with open source would be assigned to one corporate entity while all sensitive patents would be held by a separate corporate entity. Other large organizations muddle through with closer oversight of the open source teams by the legal team than either would like. It is a difficult problem to solve.

talkingtab 9y ago

Maybe there is a way to make this a little more fair. Every open source project could add a patent clause that said "If you license your software with a patent clause and invoke that clause against anyone, you lose your right to use this software". I know, I know, tit for tat. On the other hand FB wants to be part of the open source community they should do it in a fair and reasonable way, and if they need to "protection" maybe everyone else needs it too.

froweway 9y ago

All of this just poisons the water. I know people are looking for justifications for their favorite framework, but if Facebook wants to trojan horse FOSS with asymmetric privileges, it should just sell React licenses and call it a day.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ThisCourtIsAnal 9y ago

This discussion just goes to show again the extent to which the tech community allowed itself to be gaslighted into accepting that: 1. Anything about react is patentable. 2. Licensing of unspecified patents is a thing. 3. Licensing of software without disclosing related patents held by the author does not invalidate those patents on the basis of bad faith acting alone. In what obscene legal reality does adding a patent grant that can be revoked in certain circumstances puts the licensee in a worse position than a license that does not mention patents at all ?

chii 9y ago
> a patent grant if you called it a patent 'clause' - rather than a grant - then does it make more sense? More clauses == more legal conditions. The fact is that patents are obsurd in software. It should be treated like in the fashion industry - notice how clothing design is _not_ patentable, and the fashion industry has not an iota of being un-innovative or impeded! In fact, the very reason of being able to make any design copy in fashion leads to the large proliferation of innovations, as each designer tries to one-up another.
- ThisCourtIsAnal 9y ago
  Yes to my non-lawyerish understanding making it a clause in the BSD license would be different - it would no longer be a BSD license but rather a new (non OSI) license containing provisions regarding patents. I agree that software patents are evil but then so are many other parts of the modern legal system, but even with them it feels that what facebook (and other companies) are doing shouldn't have any legal standing - see my comment down the original thread.
  - chii 9y ago
    > it would no longer be a BSD license and i'd argue that the license that facebook is using _is_ indeed a new license! It's BSD plus something added to it! Unless the end user has the choice to not take the patent clause ("grant") as part of their license. IANAL, so i dont know if it is possible to cherry pick like this.

kjsthree 9y ago

> As part of the patent grant, you’d have to stop using Facebook open source upon claiming patent infringement. IANAL but I don't believe this is correct. If I'm using React and I decide to sue Facebook for infringing some other software patents I hold, I lose the patent grant for any potential patents Facebook might hold concerning React. Which they could go after me with if they do indeed hold such patents. There's nothing proactively forcing me off React. I just don't see anything but good from this BSD+patent grant situation. It lessens software patent litigation in general and lets me know I'm safe from Facebook suing me specially. It seems fantastic!

abritinthebay 9y ago
Indeed. I seems to me that all of this noice is due to programmers thinking they understand basic law. They don’t. Most developers don’t understand basic copyright, let alone licenses and grants.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
chaostheory 9y ago
What happens when those patents are no longer potential and have been granted to Facebook?
- Lazare 9y ago
  A patent application must be filed within 1 year of public disclosure or its barred, and React has been out for years. And any pending application filed during that 1 year window would be visible now, so... ...nothing is going to happen. There's no submarine patents possible here. (...from Facebook, anyhow.)
  - chaostheory 9y ago
    This license isn't exclusive to React. Assuming that you're correct and Facebook's legal team made a mistake, what happens when everything is filed correctly with another project? What happens when another company uses this? I can't help but feel that the big picture is being missed. If Facebook's open source projects don't lose momentum, other companies will be tempted to do follow

halfnibble 9y ago

All of these feel good stories about the Facebook license will immediately become null and void the moment they actually use it. Like an active volcano erupting for the first time in recent history, people will run away and never look back. Besides, React is not that great. Mixing view and controller, and incremental DOM is better anyway.

halfnibble 9y ago
Are downvoters not liking the volcano analogy for the FB license, or the critique of ReactJS?

yeukhon 9y ago

My take is most people are worrying too much. I see lawsuits against big tech corp either comes from patent trolls or other competitors at the same scale. Being careful and prepare for future "do evil" is great. The only reason we can't trust patent license is because patent trolls are ruining the whole patent system, and the clauses in many patent licenses are too complicated to be trusted IMO.

kevmo 9y ago
A lot of evil in the world has stemmed from people not worrying. I am glad our community is worrying.
- yeukhon 9y ago
  Worrying too much is going to hurt the community as well. Worrying that your friends are spying on you, worrying your family will leave you, worrying the world will come to an end. How much can you worry?

vijaybritto 9y ago

Even though Facebook's points are valid from their perspective, I think that they are setting a bad precedent which can be utilized by all the powerful corps if this picks up steam! Is this the only way to stop a patent troll? Or does FB want others to think harder before suing?

imron 9y ago

> To my knowledge, Facebook has never proactively sued anyone for infringing its patents. Past performance is not an indicator of future outcomes.

dottrap 9y ago

How can you tell if Apple is using React for their documentation page?

matt4077 9y ago
Right click -> view source?
- dottrap 9y ago
  I did that, but I don't know what to look for. I searched for React but it didn't find anything. The article claims Apple uses React. I wanted to verify that claim.
dikaiosune 9y ago
The react devtools extensions for Chrome usually shows me when a page is using react.
jameside 9y ago
The React developer tools usually can tell if a site is using React and shows you the component hierarchy. Screenshot of https://developer.apple.com/documentation/ https://developer.apple.com/documentation/ taken today: https://i.imgur.com/yF1Q3uY.png https://i.imgur.com/yF1Q3uY.png.

ThisCourtIsAnal 9y ago

<not a lawyer> In particular my reading is that the BSD license alone gives anyone an irrevocable right to use, modify and redistribute the software providing only the conditions in that license are met. So one can either ignore the PATENTS file altogether or to formally fork the repo while omitting this file and it would be as if that file never existed. Facebooks' (et al.) claim that these two files together constitute the governing license should be challenged as fraudulent - if they want to relicense react under a new license that contains terms regarding patents they can do so but the last revision before that would still be BSD licensed and the community can fork it. </still not a lawyer>

the100rabh 9y ago

Sorry for my ignorance, but has Facebook written anywhere the patents its giving away with React ? Are they really worthy of patents ?

skrebbel 9y ago

A BSD license without a patent grant gives you less safety than a BSD license with a bad patent grant. If you're not ok with Facebook's BSD+Patents, then you shouldn't be ok with BSD alone either. There are licenses with a decent papent grant (notably, Apache) but BSD and MIT aren't among them. If you're all up in arms about Facebook's OSS licensing and at the same time use OSS that is licensed without a patent grant at all then you're a hypocrite.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

yladiz 9y ago

One thing I think would lay to rest a lot of this issue would be if Facebook would just explicitly state, "We have patents for React," or, "We hold no patents for React." There's a lot of misinformation going around, and some people say that there have been searches and found nothing, others have said there are patents, so it's very confusing. My understanding is that Facebook doesn't hold any patents for React or technologies that React uses, but I don't know for sure because I haven't seen it from a qualified source and Facebook hasn't said anything. The other thing I think would help is if Facebook made is crystal clear the meaning of the patent grant and explained it in plain English, because they currently aren't doing a good job at explaining it as evidenced by people always saying different things about it. Their relative silence and opaqueness around this issue only causes confusion and distrust of their OSS work, even if it is good. The main reason that I don't like the patent grant isn't because of React specifically, it's because Facebook revokes ANY patents if you sue them for patent infringement, even ones unconcerned with the technology you're suing them for. This is why I prefer OSS licenses with explicit patent grants better, because they're worded in such a way that the only patent grants you lose are the ones that concern the technology under license (see Apache 2.0).

JoshMnem 9y ago
It isn't just React -- the PATENTS file is in most Facebook repos.
- yladiz 9y ago
  True, but most people are concerned about React since that's the technology that most people only use.
  - JoshMnem 9y ago
    If most people are only concerned about React, then they aren't paying attention.

guelo 9y ago

I get that it seems scary for an innovative startup to have facebook steal your intellectual property just because of a javascript library you're using. But I am of the opinion that patents are worthless to small startups anyway so it's not much of a concern. Until a startup starts getting to unicorn status patents are basically useless. If a tech giant wants to blatantly steal your idea they will and their wall of lawyers will mean you can do absolutely nothing unless you can convince a VC that a legal fight is the best way to blow through millions of dollars.

mplewis 9y ago

"To my knowledge, Facebook has never proactively sued anyone for infringing its patents." That's not a good enough reason for developers or startups to give away legal power like that. Forgive me if I don't feel like waiting for them to turn evil.

jameside 9y ago
Hi, author of the post here. This quote isn't a reason to agree to the license. Agreeing to the Facebook BSD+Patents license doesn't rest on the assumption that Facebook will continue a defensive stance on patents. It gives you rights or mostly preserves your rights if Facebook were to proactively claim patent infringement. From my reading: 1. The patent grant specifically gives you patent licenses for Facebook open source, so Facebook couldn't rightfully claim patent infringement for the licensed patents. 2. The grant also says if Facebook were to proactively sue you for infringing its patents, you'd keep its patent licenses even if you were to countersue. (Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, nor is this legal advice.)
- politician 9y ago
  Hi James, it looks like you've invested effort in the Expo SDK via expo.io to promote React, but aren't currently monetizing it nor do you have any patents under Expo that may be at risk. I understand that you're in YC S16, but the scenario below assumes you haven't received any investment yet. Let's suppose that Expo SDK 2 has valuable IP that you've protected with a patent, and that you are now seeking investment so that you can grow a business around it. It works! Investors are excited, customers love it, and business is growing! Well, until Facebook comes around and releases the Fxpo SDK with a large media launch at F10. It contains some of the same technology you added to Expo SDK 2, perhaps even some of that patented technology that enticed your investors. Wow, that sucks. So you call up your lawyers and setup a meeting with Facebook. At the meeting Facebook says, "Tut tut tut. James, you can't sue us for patent infringement because we'll pull your license to use React. James, your entire business is built around React and it might cost, what, $1M USD to replace it with Angular. And how long might that take? Months? Years?! James, we see that you're a smart businessman. Look, we'll buy your company for $200,000. Think it over." What will you do? Sell Expo Inc to Facebook for pennies, or fight them in court with the lawyer's fees and the loss of use of your money making product? Will you have enough cash to cover the gap? Will your investors, anxious to get their 5% return over the 10 year life of the fund, stick behind you or will they write this one off? When you look back at the time you lost to dealing with this crap, wouldn't you have rather just used Angular or Ember or... Elm?

bad_user 9y ago

The post describes Facebook's motivation for their license, but personally, I don't care about their motivation, but about the fact that their license is anti-Open Source, anti-Free Software. There's actually a big difference between the patents grant of a license like Apache 2.0 and FB's license and I quote (from Apache 2.0): > "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" In other words the patents grant and its revocation is made explicitly in the context of "The Work" being licensed. So you can still sue a company like Facebook for unrelated projects and still be protected by the license. By contrast Facebook's PATENTS license says that: > "The license granted here under will terminate, automatically and without notice, if you (or any of your subsidiaries, corporate affiliates or agents) initiate directly or indirectly, or take a direct financial interest in, any Patent Assertion: (i) against Facebook or any of its subsidiaries or corporate affiliates ..." Let me spell this out for you: 1. if Facebook infringes your IP, but you happen to use React, then you can't sue them without also risk infringing on their React-related IP and be counter-sued for it 2. their PATENTS creates a unidirectional relationship; when Facebook accepts your contributions, they are protected because MIT / BSD are said to have an "implicit patents grant" (which supposedly works in the US) due to the estoppel principle Btw, Microsoft is taking steps to do what Facebook is doing as well. See for example how they are switching from Apache 2.0 to MIT and the disingenuous way they are communicating the change: https://github.com/Microsoft/visualfsharp/issues/3440 https://github.com/Microsoft/visualfsharp/issues/3440 But folks, this is not how Open Source or Free Software is supposed to work. When you release something as Open Source, you need to allow others to use your work as they wish (Freedom 0, or in OSI parlance, no discrimination against fields of endeavor). Patent-encumbered software is NOT Open Source or Free Software.

juiyout 9y ago

It is interesting that so many people preface their comments with IANAL. Isn't it that one is not a lawyer until proven otherwise?

vog 9y ago
Not only that. In case an actual lawyer comments, they often start with something like "IAAL, but I'm not your lawyer". Because even their opinion is only to be trusted if they did an exhaustive investigation on the topic, which is a huge amount of work that they won't be able to do unless they are paid for it.

Isofarro 9y ago

Replace "Yahoo" with "Microsoft", and "Facebook" with "Yahoo", and you have basically the same justification given to me as a Yahoo employee to patent my (company internal) hack-day ideas. The engineering manager responsible said Yahoo would only use patents as a defensive measure, to defend themselves against patent threats from other companies. Same promises, same logic. Two years later Yahoo launched their software patent action against Facebook. Software patents can only be used offensively. Because their defensive capability is limited to the threat of using them offensively. If there is no substance to the threat they are useless. So the value of software patents rests solely on their offensive capability.

nebabyte 9y ago
"The best defense..."
bodegajed 9y ago
An investment of $550 million that is only "for defensive purposes only" is BS. Company policies change all the time especially if a new market competitor emerges. Here's a question though. Let's say you're a startup investor and you have a choice to acquire one startup and one startup uses react and one uses vue.js both have stable apps and both have the same revenue which one would you choose.
- dayjah 9y ago
  Generally M&A involves due diligence; which involves assessing the business and the technology. It aims to summarize assets and liabilities. It would surprise me significantly if a viable product was not acquired because of a technology choice; a viable product rarely hinges on one piece of technology -- the acquirer is likely to make it a goal of the acquired company to change some tech (react-> some equivalent) if they really view this as a significant liability. IANAL :) but was once acqui-hired by a patent troll.
m12k 9y ago
Software patents are the nuclear weapons of the software industry. If you don't have them, you're at the mercy of those who do. But even if you get them with deterrence in mind, it can still be used offensively - and if it falls into the hands of someone with nothing to lose (a terrorist group with no homeland/patent troll, aka non-practising entity, hence immune to countersuits) none of the deterrence works. In short we'd all be better off if they just didn't exist

jlebrech 9y ago

It makes a lot of sense, it costs a lot of money to hire and fire. Hire less by automating. Fire less by retraining staff.

tomelders 9y ago

The real problem is Software patents. They do nothing but harm. Get rid.

scarlexi 9y ago

really

lowbloodsugar 9y ago

IANAL but the patent grant seems independent of the BSD License. React is BSD licensed. In addition, Facebook has provided a patent grant that applies under certain conditions. The license for React says that Facebook has given me permission to use it. It doesn't seem that they can then sue me over patents related to the code, because they've just explicitly said I can use it. If I sue Facebook over patents, then the patent grant no longer applies. But the BSD License does.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jbverschoor 9y ago

Patents were created to protect an inventor. Facebook does not need to protect any inventions, because they are so big and powerful. Patents can only hurt them. If you have such a monopoly, only legal protection would protect you.

alecco 9y ago

Nonsense. Patent trolls don't use Facebook open source projects. Either they are completely dedicated to law or they are giants with their own code (e.g. Yahoo/IBM/Microsoft in the article) This is the excuse. Facebook wants to dominate the small companies who might threaten their business model with patents on future technologies.

weddpros 9y ago

When I learnt about it, I thought "Facebook wants to kill patent laws" which I believe is a good thing. What if Facebook starts a foundation where every member makes the same kind of agreement. "Sue one of us over patents, we'll all withdraw our patent grants from you". That might end the patent craziness. This hockey stick (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent#/media/File:US_patents_1790-2008.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent#/media/File:US_patents_...) shows the problem with patents clearly: what worked 200 years ago can't work the same today. The world is moving much faster than ever, yet patents are still granted for very long times. At this rate, how can you expect to NOT infringe on a patent? Everybody's paying huge sums to lawyers to play what has become a null-sum game in the end. I think Facebook illustrates this: "sue me for infringement, and I'll do my best to show you're infringing too". Null-sum game.