11 ms·

So which FB project still have a BSD+patents license. I count: * ReasonML - https://github.com/facebook/reason/blob/master/PATENTS.txt https://github.com/face

by cies 9y ago

So which FB project still have a BSD+patents license. I count: * ReasonML - https://github.com/facebook/reason/blob/master/PATENTS.txt https://github.com/facebook/reason/blob/master/PATENTS.txt * GraphQL - https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js/blob/master/PATENTS * react-native - https://github.com/facebook/react-native/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/facebook/react-native/blob/master/PATENTS * PlanOut - https://github.com/facebook/planout/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/facebook/planout/blob/master/PATENTS * Flow - https://github.com/facebook/flow/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/facebook/flow/blob/master/PATENTS * Haxl - https://github.com/facebook/Haxl/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/facebook/Haxl/blob/master/PATENTS * Flux - https://github.com/facebook/flux/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/facebook/flux/blob/master/PATENTS Just a few that I found.. Please reply if you know more project that are still BSD+PATENTS licensed.

olavgg 9y ago
https://github.com/facebook/fb.resnet.torch/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/facebook/fb.resnet.torch/blob/master/PATE... https://github.com/caffe2/caffe2/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/caffe2/caffe2/blob/master/PATENTS
- jiayq84 9y ago
  Yangqing (creator and main author of Caffe/Caffe2) here. We are moving to Apache 2.0 in a few days.
berfarah 9y ago
Flow is specifically mentioned in the linked release as getting rid of it...
dehli 9y ago
According to the link posted, it looks like Flow will also be relicensed to MIT.
snowybio 9y ago
https://github.com/facebook-atom/atom-ide-ui/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/facebook-atom/atom-ide-ui/blob/master/PAT...
tempw 9y ago
Which license is PyTorch?
- aub3bhat 9y ago
  PyTorch itself isnt, But the multi-GPU version requires Gloo which is BSD+PATENTS https://github.com/facebookincubator/gloo/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/facebookincubator/gloo/blob/master/PATENT...
  - apaszke 9y ago
    PyTorch uses NVIDIA NCCL for multi-GPU communication (under BSD license). Gloo is only one of the three backends that can be used for distributed communication out of the box.
    - aub3bhat 9y ago
      Thanks!
timdorr 9y ago
GraphQL has an ongoing discussion about this (that predates much of the recent flare ups about PATENTS): https://github.com/facebook/graphql/issues/351 https://github.com/facebook/graphql/issues/351 The complicating factor there is Facebook actually has a patent covering the GraphQL specification (along with the fact that they're applying PATENTS to a specification, vs an implementation): https://www.google.com/patents/US9646028 https://www.google.com/patents/US9646028
- jancsika 9y ago
  From https://code.facebook.com/posts/112130496157735/explaining-react-s-license/ https://code.facebook.com/posts/112130496157735/explaining-r... > As our business has become successful, we've become a larger target for meritless patent litigation. This type of litigation can be extremely costly in terms of both resources and attention. It would have been easy for us to stop contributing to open source, or to do what some other large companies do and only release software that isn't used in our most successful products, but we decided to take a different approach. Never heard Facebook answer: why didn't they just follow Red Hat's model and make a "Patent Promise"[1]? Then accumulation of software patents would help deter meritless litigation while staying out of the way of FLOSS developers getting their work done. [1] https://www.redhat.com/en/about/patent-promise https://www.redhat.com/en/about/patent-promise
  - jibcage 9y ago
    Can somebody who speaks legalese translate Red Hat's Patent Promise into more parseable English? I'm curious how it works, but the wording is pretty obscure to me.
    - jklein11 9y ago
      I am not a lawyer, but my take on it is: Red Hat holds patents but promises not to enforce them. This means anyone can use the IP without worrying about being sued for infringement. No one else can claim they own the IP because Red Hat already owns it. They also have a clause saying that if Red Hat sells the IP, the buyer needs to uphold the same promise.
ianstormtaylor 9y ago
A few more for your list: dataloader, draft-js, express-graphql, regenerator, relay, yoga
aub3bhat 9y ago
https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/blob/master/PATENT...
bsimpson 9y ago
Rebound, their spring physics implementation for Android (Java) and the Web (JavaScript)
arca_vorago 9y ago
I've been trying to tell everyone licensing is more important than they realize, but there are so many people who fundamentally misunderstand licensing and therefor just don't care (dwtfyw license for example), or have falsely been trained by subpar instructors at uni and $othertraining about how bsd/mit is the superior license for business because $reasons. The four freedoms and free software solve so many of the problems I see around modern tech-infrastructure. No, free software doesn't solve every issue and has some of it's own, for example I think at the code complexity levels we are at the many eyes theory is starting to crumble, but it doesn't change the core truisms about freedom in computing that are important for us to move forward in a free and open society if we actually want to start solving prolems. Now that we have a concrete example of how picking tooling with bad licensing can bite people in the butt, please take this time to at least consider GPL varients (A/L/GPLv3) for as much of your tooling as you possibly can. (perhaps CC0/CCBY/CCBYSA for content) In my opinion, MIT/BSD licenses like FB moved to in this case simply aren't good enough to be future-proof, primarily because of the ability of future tivoization of a product that removes freedom from the user (think BSD on playstation). Remember, either the user controls the program, or the program controls the user. If the GPL scares you for some reason or you have question about it (commercial sales of gpl software for example), feel free to ask. I've spent enough time wading through just about every license so I think I might be able to cut through some fud.
- jakobegger 9y ago
  Please tell me more about commercial sales of GPL software. How could I make sure that people pay me for using my desktop app if it was GPL?
  - arca_vorago 9y ago
    A common misconception is that under GPL all your code must be released to the public. This is not true. You only have to give code to the user after purchase. Now, it's true that the user could then upload your software to the public (under gpl), but many of the issues surrounding that (such as lost sales #) aren't as bad as people imagine they are, and in the foss world are generally made up for by high-maintainence intervals (so forks would be behind feature-wise), and support/service contracts to augment the traditional sales model. (Redhat model)
rafinha 9y ago
caffe2, proxygen
- jiayq84 9y ago
  Yangqing (creator and main author of Caffe/Caffe2) here. We are moving to Apache 2.0 in a few days.
sandGorgon 9y ago
Caffe2 machine learning https://github.com/caffe2/caffe2/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/caffe2/caffe2/blob/master/PATENTS
- jiayq84 9y ago
  We are moving to Apache 2.0 in a few days. Early draft at https://github.com/Yangqing/caffe2/tree/apache https://github.com/Yangqing/caffe2/tree/apache pending double check to make sure we are honoring all existing contributors.
  - sandGorgon 9y ago
    this is pretty cool and huge! thanks for this.
alecco 9y ago
I'm astounded how everyone things MIT == Apache2. MIT doesn't protect you from patent litigation. This is a backwards move. Facebook is very good at PR painting this as a win for users. See http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Patent_clauses_in_software_licences#Apache_License_2.0 http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Patent_clauses_in_software_licences... an explanation https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/1890 https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/1890
- uiri 9y ago
  The MIT license does not explicitly mention patents. However, depending on the lawyer, an argument could be made that it contains an implicit patent license. I think that Facebook would have an uphill battle arguing that their relicensing didn't include patents after this kerfuffle.
  - brodock 9y ago
    Exactly. This is like: "oh you didn't like to receive the patent under this terms, get this, no patents grant anymore"
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]

by cies 9y ago

olavgg 9y ago

https://github.com/facebook/fb.resnet.torch/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/facebook/fb.resnet.torch/blob/master/PATE... https://github.com/caffe2/caffe2/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/caffe2/caffe2/blob/master/PATENTS

jiayq84 9y ago
Yangqing (creator and main author of Caffe/Caffe2) here. We are moving to Apache 2.0 in a few days.

berfarah 9y ago

Flow is specifically mentioned in the linked release as getting rid of it...

dehli 9y ago

According to the link posted, it looks like Flow will also be relicensed to MIT.

snowybio 9y ago

https://github.com/facebook-atom/atom-ide-ui/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/facebook-atom/atom-ide-ui/blob/master/PAT...

tempw 9y ago

Which license is PyTorch?

aub3bhat 9y ago
PyTorch itself isnt, But the multi-GPU version requires Gloo which is BSD+PATENTS https://github.com/facebookincubator/gloo/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/facebookincubator/gloo/blob/master/PATENT...
- apaszke 9y ago
  PyTorch uses NVIDIA NCCL for multi-GPU communication (under BSD license). Gloo is only one of the three backends that can be used for distributed communication out of the box.
  - aub3bhat 9y ago
    Thanks!

timdorr 9y ago

GraphQL has an ongoing discussion about this (that predates much of the recent flare ups about PATENTS): https://github.com/facebook/graphql/issues/351 https://github.com/facebook/graphql/issues/351 The complicating factor there is Facebook actually has a patent covering the GraphQL specification (along with the fact that they're applying PATENTS to a specification, vs an implementation): https://www.google.com/patents/US9646028 https://www.google.com/patents/US9646028

jancsika 9y ago
From https://code.facebook.com/posts/112130496157735/explaining-react-s-license/ https://code.facebook.com/posts/112130496157735/explaining-r... > As our business has become successful, we've become a larger target for meritless patent litigation. This type of litigation can be extremely costly in terms of both resources and attention. It would have been easy for us to stop contributing to open source, or to do what some other large companies do and only release software that isn't used in our most successful products, but we decided to take a different approach. Never heard Facebook answer: why didn't they just follow Red Hat's model and make a "Patent Promise"[1]? Then accumulation of software patents would help deter meritless litigation while staying out of the way of FLOSS developers getting their work done. [1] https://www.redhat.com/en/about/patent-promise https://www.redhat.com/en/about/patent-promise
- jibcage 9y ago
  Can somebody who speaks legalese translate Red Hat's Patent Promise into more parseable English? I'm curious how it works, but the wording is pretty obscure to me.
  - jklein11 9y ago
    I am not a lawyer, but my take on it is: Red Hat holds patents but promises not to enforce them. This means anyone can use the IP without worrying about being sued for infringement. No one else can claim they own the IP because Red Hat already owns it. They also have a clause saying that if Red Hat sells the IP, the buyer needs to uphold the same promise.

ianstormtaylor 9y ago

A few more for your list: dataloader, draft-js, express-graphql, regenerator, relay, yoga

aub3bhat 9y ago

https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/facebookresearch/faiss/blob/master/PATENT...

bsimpson 9y ago

Rebound, their spring physics implementation for Android (Java) and the Web (JavaScript)

arca_vorago 9y ago

I've been trying to tell everyone licensing is more important than they realize, but there are so many people who fundamentally misunderstand licensing and therefor just don't care (dwtfyw license for example), or have falsely been trained by subpar instructors at uni and $othertraining about how bsd/mit is the superior license for business because $reasons. The four freedoms and free software solve so many of the problems I see around modern tech-infrastructure. No, free software doesn't solve every issue and has some of it's own, for example I think at the code complexity levels we are at the many eyes theory is starting to crumble, but it doesn't change the core truisms about freedom in computing that are important for us to move forward in a free and open society if we actually want to start solving prolems. Now that we have a concrete example of how picking tooling with bad licensing can bite people in the butt, please take this time to at least consider GPL varients (A/L/GPLv3) for as much of your tooling as you possibly can. (perhaps CC0/CCBY/CCBYSA for content) In my opinion, MIT/BSD licenses like FB moved to in this case simply aren't good enough to be future-proof, primarily because of the ability of future tivoization of a product that removes freedom from the user (think BSD on playstation). Remember, either the user controls the program, or the program controls the user. If the GPL scares you for some reason or you have question about it (commercial sales of gpl software for example), feel free to ask. I've spent enough time wading through just about every license so I think I might be able to cut through some fud.

jakobegger 9y ago
Please tell me more about commercial sales of GPL software. How could I make sure that people pay me for using my desktop app if it was GPL?
- arca_vorago 9y ago
  A common misconception is that under GPL all your code must be released to the public. This is not true. You only have to give code to the user after purchase. Now, it's true that the user could then upload your software to the public (under gpl), but many of the issues surrounding that (such as lost sales #) aren't as bad as people imagine they are, and in the foss world are generally made up for by high-maintainence intervals (so forks would be behind feature-wise), and support/service contracts to augment the traditional sales model. (Redhat model)

rafinha 9y ago

caffe2, proxygen

jiayq84 9y ago
Yangqing (creator and main author of Caffe/Caffe2) here. We are moving to Apache 2.0 in a few days.

sandGorgon 9y ago

Caffe2 machine learning https://github.com/caffe2/caffe2/blob/master/PATENTS https://github.com/caffe2/caffe2/blob/master/PATENTS

jiayq84 9y ago
We are moving to Apache 2.0 in a few days. Early draft at https://github.com/Yangqing/caffe2/tree/apache https://github.com/Yangqing/caffe2/tree/apache pending double check to make sure we are honoring all existing contributors.
- sandGorgon 9y ago
  this is pretty cool and huge! thanks for this.

alecco 9y ago

I'm astounded how everyone things MIT == Apache2. MIT doesn't protect you from patent litigation. This is a backwards move. Facebook is very good at PR painting this as a win for users. See http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Patent_clauses_in_software_licences#Apache_License_2.0 http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Patent_clauses_in_software_licences... an explanation https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/1890 https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/1890

uiri 9y ago
The MIT license does not explicitly mention patents. However, depending on the lawyer, an argument could be made that it contains an implicit patent license. I think that Facebook would have an uphill battle arguing that their relicensing didn't include patents after this kerfuffle.
- brodock 9y ago
  Exactly. This is like: "oh you didn't like to receive the patent under this terms, get this, no patents grant anymore"
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]