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As I understand it, this is bad because you could use their code within the copyright license but then be sued for using it without the applicable patent licens

As I understand it, this is bad because you could use their code within the copyright license but then be sued for using it without the applicable patent license... Making it open source but far from free. Just out of curiosity though, has this sort of backdoor patent infringement actually been tested in court? IANAL, let alone a bitter twisted IP lawyer, but it seems perfectly reasonable to infer relevant patent licenses from an open source contribution. "Hey here's a free meal, but you better not eat it or we'll sue!" Sticky stuff.

deleted 9y ago
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dboreham 9y ago
Perhaps, but patents can be sold. Imagine a future Facebook sells the patents to BadTrollCo. Now you have two parties : the company that open sourced the thing (hence, perhaps didn't intend to sue people for infringement) and BadTrollCo that wants their pound of flesh.
carussell 9y ago
> you could use their code within the copyright license but then be sued for using it without the applicable patent license... Making it open source but far from free This has been the gist of the complaint against software patents for the last decade+. It's why all the latest revisions of Apache, GPL, and MPL include explicit patent grants and termination criteria in their texts. It's why Microsoft included a separate patent promise when they placed .NET Core under MIT. And it's why Facebook themselves has released most of their projects with the now-infamous PATENTS additional grant. > As I understand it, this is bad because Not really. This is bad because GraphQL is a spec. If Facebook released some GraphQL-related software under any modern FOSS license, you'd be able to use it, regardless of any patents covering it. (See above.) The problem with GraphQL being a spec is that if you use some GraphQL-related software that doesn't originate from Facebook, then the licenses on any Facebook software (and thus the patent grants in that license) are irrelevant and you have no patent protection. And now you might begin to see why everyone in OSS who's acting in good faith would be better off with their own Facebook-style PATENTS grant.

deleted 9y ago

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dboreham 9y ago

Perhaps, but patents can be sold. Imagine a future Facebook sells the patents to BadTrollCo. Now you have two parties : the company that open sourced the thing (hence, perhaps didn't intend to sue people for infringement) and BadTrollCo that wants their pound of flesh.

carussell 9y ago

> you could use their code within the copyright license but then be sued for using it without the applicable patent license... Making it open source but far from free This has been the gist of the complaint against software patents for the last decade+. It's why all the latest revisions of Apache, GPL, and MPL include explicit patent grants and termination criteria in their texts. It's why Microsoft included a separate patent promise when they placed .NET Core under MIT. And it's why Facebook themselves has released most of their projects with the now-infamous PATENTS additional grant. > As I understand it, this is bad because Not really. This is bad because GraphQL is a spec. If Facebook released some GraphQL-related software under any modern FOSS license, you'd be able to use it, regardless of any patents covering it. (See above.) The problem with GraphQL being a spec is that if you use some GraphQL-related software that doesn't originate from Facebook, then the licenses on any Facebook software (and thus the patent grants in that license) are irrelevant and you have no patent protection. And now you might begin to see why everyone in OSS who's acting in good faith would be better off with their own Facebook-style PATENTS grant.