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There exist good licenses that extend a patent grant in a reasonable manner. Facebook went off and wrote their own version that is asymmetrical in their favor.
by ericflo 9y ago
There exist good licenses that extend a patent grant in a reasonable manner. Facebook went off and wrote their own version that is asymmetrical in their favor. Also, lawyers seem to agree that most OSS that don't include a patent grant are giving an implicit patent grant, and this explicit grant is worse for the developer than the implicit one (while being better for Facebook.)
- judofyr 9y agoSome lawyers argue that BSD/MIT includes an implicit patent grant, but this has never been tested in court. Facebook's lawyers obviously don't think it's clear that BSD includes an implicit patent grant, which is why they have an additional license. I don't see how "we hope that a judge would interpret the licence as an implied patent grant" is better than an actual patent grant (with some constraints). Also, IANAL, but I never understood why the revocation of the explicit patent grant would cancel out the implied patent grant. If your argument is that "the BSD licence text implies a patent grant", shouldn't that be true regardless of any additional licenses?
- ericflo 9y agoIt's not about whether or not the implicit grant exists, it's that the implicit grant doesn't go far enough for Facebook's liking. What you refer to as "some constraints" is an abdication of your ability to defend your company against Facebook infringements for as long as you use software that includes this horrible clause.