
A startup founder and ex-Facebook engineer’s story of the BSD + Patents license - irfansharif
https://medium.com/@ji/the-react-license-for-founders-and-ctos-b38d2538f3e5
======
mplewis
"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.

~~~
vmarshall23
_turn_ evil? Patents aside, isn't there a fair amount of FB behavior that
already falls in that bucket?

~~~
yeukhon
What are those behaviors?

~~~
cowpig
[https://stallman.org/facebook.html](https://stallman.org/facebook.html)

~~~
seattle_spring
Stallman, captain tinfoil hat, is not a reputable source for this sort of
thing.

------
kjsthree
> 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!

~~~
gnicholas
> _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._

It seems like you're assuming that there's a decent chance that FB doesn't
actually hold any patents on React. This seems unlikely, and is contradicted
by what the author wrote (indicating that popular React alternatives may also
infringe FB patents). Or am I not understanding your line of thinking?

My view, as a former lawyer, is that if you want to sue FB for patent
infringement, you would be very unwise to continue using React. Willful
infringement = treble damages.

~~~
Lazare
> It seems like you're assuming that there's a decent chance that FB doesn't
> actually hold any patents on React.

That's very likely actually. Patents are public; people have searched around
for obvious concepts and phrases involving the virtual dom, synthetic events,
etc., and nothing has been found. (There's also nothing novel in what React
does, so you'd kind of hope there'd be no patents.)

> This seems unlikely

Why do you think Facebook having patents on React is likely? (Come to that,
why is it any more likely than them having patents on the tech behind, say,
Angular?)

> and is contradicted by what the author wrote (indicating that popular React
> alternatives may also infringe FB patents)

 _IF_ a patent on, say, the virtual DOM exists, then Preact, Vue, etc., will
all violate it. But it seems fairly clear that no such patent exists. So the
author is quite right; popular React alternatives almost certainly use just as
many of Facebook's patents as React does...it's just the number is probably
"zero".

~~~
e9
what about this one? It was literally just published: "Automatic overdraw
reduction before rendering"

[https://www.google.com/patents/US20170221242?dq=facebook+use...](https://www.google.com/patents/US20170221242?dq=facebook+user+interface+react+virtual+dom&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjWo8DVvZzWAhWojlQKHXRDAkgQ6AEIPzAD)

~~~
pavlov
That's an ugly React-related patent application for sure.

I hope this application doesn't go anywhere, as there would seem to be a lot
of prior art. For example, the Cocoa API in macOS implements the method of
Claim 1 pretty much to the letter:

[https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nsview/1483...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nsview/1483772-getrectsbeingdrawn?language=objc)

This API was introduced in OS X 10.3, so that would be 14 years ago.

~~~
underwater
React doesn't do layout so it can't do occlusion.

~~~
pavlov
The patent description explicitly states it's about React:

"Although many embodiments are described herein in the context of React,
embodiments are not limited to React or to rendering only updated views as
determined by React libraries."

------
chaostheory
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
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.

------
ThisCourtIsAnal
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
> 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
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
> 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.

~~~
ThisCourtIsAnal
It wouldn't be a "grant" if the user didn't have a choice of not taking it.
Consider if somewhere in the repo there was a file called GOATS which
conditioned the right to use react on having goats sacrificed to facebook
every new moon, would it make react BSD+Goats licensed ?

------
nmjohn
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?

~~~
derefr
If everyone used React, Facebook would then be rather free to sue everyone
(especially other mega corps) for violating Facebook's patents. Normally, this
isn't the case, because every company of appreciable size has at least a few
patents laying around that you're violating, which they could use to
countersue. It's a MAD situation. But if you sign away your right to sue
Facebook, you're also signing away your right to _countersue_ Facebook—thus
removing any disincentive Facebook would have for just suing anyone they like.

~~~
nmjohn
Doesn't the license explicitly state the opposite?

> Notwithstanding the foregoing, if Facebook or any of its subsidiaries or
> corporate affiliates files a lawsuit alleging patent infringement against
> you in the first instance, and you respond by filing a patent infringement
> counterclaim in that lawsuit against that party that is unrelated to the
> Software, the license granted hereunder will not terminate under section (i)
> of this paragraph due to such counterclaim. [0]

As I read it, it only applies if you are the original instigator, not if they
are.

[0]:
[https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/af312ce006ebe76307662...](https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/af312ce006ebe76307662d78d63328a047bd9780/PATENTS#L21-L26)

~~~
chii
This needs to be more up-voted, so that mis-understandings about the license
doesn't perpetuate! You only "lose out" on the patent grant if you sue
facebook over patents - _NOT_ when facebook sues you.

------
Mayzie
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
> 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.

~~~
bsimpson
I've never worked at Facebook (so I can't compare directly), but I've never
met a Googler who shied away from open sourcing code for legal reasons; no one
ever said "I would open source this, but only if I could attach a patent grant
to it."

There are plenty of reasons that someone might choose not to open source code
(e.g. they like working on only internal infrastructure or don't want to
bother with external maintenance), but I don't think the patent grant has
anything to do with why a developer at {Google, Facebook, Microsoft} would
choose to open source (or not) a library.

~~~
notacoward
I've never worked at Google either, but I have worked at other companies where
people got in serious trouble for trying to open-source something that was
associated with the company's IP. It's important to remember here that
copyrights and patents are separate. A company might be very permissive when
it comes to copyright (though woe betide the engineer who tries to open-source
something related to _trade secret_ IP) while still aggressively protecting
their patents. Have you seen a Googler actually try to attach an explicit
patent license to Google code? After Oracle, I'd be pretty surprised. The
BSD/MIT non-license is the real stealth option here. It precludes _no_ action
by the patent holder, under any conditions, so of course your local legal
department would have no problem with it.

~~~
bsimpson
Google defaults to Apache.

The whole process is documented here
([https://opensource.google.com/docs/releasing/approval/](https://opensource.google.com/docs/releasing/approval/))
but here's the tl;dr:

1\. Googler tells their director that they want to open source some code; the
director approves it.

2\. Googler tells the Open Source + Patents Office that they're releasing
code. The OSPO says to use Apache as the license unless you have a good reason
not to, and does a sanity check to ensure that the license information is in
all the right places in the repo.

3\. Googler posts the repo to GitHub.

Googlers don't usually even think about licenses. The OSPO says to use Apache,
so that's what we use.

~~~
notacoward
Do you suppose that neither the director nor the OSPO is checking _which_
patents relate to the code under consideration, and that neither might reject
the request on the basis that it would compromise valuable IP? It would
actually be irresponsible for them not to. Given the value of that IP to the
company, they have a duty to ensure that it's protected. The fact (if fact it
is) that individual engineers don't worry about it means approximately nothing
except that they're sheltered little pups.

------
Isofarro
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.

~~~
bodegajed
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
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.

------
stuaxo
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.

------
politician
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
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
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
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.

~~~
politician
I don't think you're thinking it through. Facebook is setting up a situation
where it can do bargain barrel corp dev -- acquihires or (what reasonable
folks would consider) theft of IP based on what technology was used to build
the target's "About Us" page.

~~~
chrisco255
No, they're setting up a situation where if Yahoo sues them for some one-click
patent they can be like, "well, you're using our virtual dom patent so let's
call the whole thing off"

------
tjpnz
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.

~~~
Macha
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.

------
rectang
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.

------
TwelveNights
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
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
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.

------
owens99
> 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?

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
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
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
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.

~~~
Canada
Is the list of patents Facebook thinks are used by react even disclosed?

~~~
timv
No.

The majority view seems to be that there are _none_.

But Facebook has a very large patent portfolio, so if they wanted to
sue/counter-sue you, they could probably find something that was close enough
to lock you up in litigation for a long time.

~~~
ergo14
[https://www.google.com/patents/US20170221242](https://www.google.com/patents/US20170221242)
\- The majority is probably wrong in this case, unfortunately.

------
bad_user
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.

------
Gaelan
[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
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
What court says BSD has an implicit patent grant?

------
yladiz
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
It isn't just React -- the PATENTS file is in most Facebook repos.

~~~
yladiz
True, but most people are concerned about React since that's the technology
that most people only use.

~~~
JoshMnem
If most people are only concerned about React, then they aren't paying
attention.

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

~~~
timv
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
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.

------
ThisCourtIsAnal
<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>

------
jbverschoor
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.

------
talkingtab
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.

------
weddpros
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_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent#/media/File:US_patents_1790-2008.png))
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.

------
skrebbel
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.

------
ljcrabs
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.

------
vijaybritto
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?

------
froweway
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.

------
guelo
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.

------
khuey
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
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.

~~~
Lazare
> 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.

That's correct.

------
lowbloodsugar
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.

------
yeukhon
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
A lot of evil in the world has stemmed from people not worrying. I am glad our
community is worrying.

~~~
yeukhon
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?

------
imron
> To my knowledge, Facebook has never proactively sued anyone for infringing
> its patents.

Past performance is not an indicator of future outcomes.

------
tssva
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
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.

------
juiyout
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
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.

------
jlebrech
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.

------
alecco
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.

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

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

~~~
matt4077
Right click -> view source?

~~~
dottrap
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.

------
RyanShook
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.

------
bdefore
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.

~~~
hajile
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
> The fact is that every big company named by that post undoubtedly has an
> expensive cross licensing agreement.

Sorry, that's simply not true.

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

