
Startups should not use React - nbmh
https://medium.com/@raulk/if-youre-a-startup-you-should-not-use-react-reflecting-on-the-bsd-patents-license-b049d4a67dd2
======
cbhl
It's worth noting this "you can't sue us for violating your patents if you use
our non-free open source software" is working as designed.

Facebook claims that if _every_ company adopted a React-like license, that
software patents as we know it would basically die. It's worth noting that
both Google and Facebook's patent lawyers are generally of the opinion that
software patents are net bad, but differ in their opinions of how to express
that intent without exposing their companies to additional risk from patent
trolls.

If you want to be acquired, then this is the opposite of what you want. You
file patents for every part of the product you can; you audit your
dependencies to avoid copyleft (AGPL and GPL) and React-like licenses, so your
software can be folded into a 100% closed source product or shut down or
whatever your acquirer wants.

If you run a start-up, and you're worried about the React license, you should
be speaking to your own legal counsel about the best way forward.

~~~
raulk
If Facebook's approach is so great, by introducing a legal provision in the
OSS license, how come it has not been adopted by any other company except for
Palantir, despite being introduced in 2014?

I analysed 75+ OSS projects from 35 companies, and Facebook is practically
alone.

[https://medium.com/@raulk/list-of-companies-and-popular-
proj...](https://medium.com/@raulk/list-of-companies-and-popular-projects-by-
the-open-source-licenses-they-use-35a53eaf1c80)

~~~
web007
I commented elsewhere on this, but how about CDDL? IANAL but it seems to do
the same thing, patent poison pill in the event of suit.

~~~
raulk
CDDL includes a "weak patent retaliation" clause [1], meaning you only lose
the grant if you initiate a patent infringement claim within the context of
the project, i.e. saying that the project you have adopted infringes a patent
of yours.

And even if you do, the revocation takes effect in 60 days, which is pretty
friendly IMHO.

[1]
[http://en.swpat.org/wiki/CDDL_and_patents](http://en.swpat.org/wiki/CDDL_and_patents)

------
pluma
Nerds shouldn't write opinion pieces about subject domains they don't
understand.

Seriously, stop this. Sometimes you just need to admit you have no idea what
you're talking about and shut up.

The author honestly thinks using Preact or Inferno could protect them from
patent lawsuits. Oh, wait, maybe "Facebook holds any software patents on the
Virtual DOM or the React APIs" so better use Vue and Cycle.

Unless you actually know

1) which patents Facebook holds and

2) which patents are relevant to each framework/library (i.e. React and
various its alternatives)

stop giving people legal advice about which library they should be using.

The cosmic irony would be if Facebook didn't hold any patents covering React
to begin with but DID hold patents covering parts of Angular, Ember, Vue and
Preact, over which they can sue who they like because Facebook never gave them
a patent grant for those. Sounds far-fetched? It isn't because we don't know
which actual patents these could be and who holds them.

Or for all you know Google might sue you. Or Apple.

This isn't a discussion, this is literally just a bunch of nerds ranting on
the Internet about problems they don't sufficiently understand, playing Three
Blind Men with the elephant that is Software Patents.

~~~
emilfihlman
_You_ should stop, immediately. Attempting to silence an issue because people
are not experts on the issue is beyond immoral.

Please reflect on how you are hurting everyone, not helping.

~~~
pluma
There isn't an issue. The issue is software patents.

What's hurting people is self-proclaimed experts writing authoritative blog
posts about what technologies people should chose and presenting it as if it
were legal advice.

This entire drama is a 100% repeat of what pops up on almost a monthly basis
because some random developer finds out about Facebook's open source patent
grant and decides he has an opinion without even understanding the basic
underlying concepts.

There are legitimate issues worth discussing, especially around the notion of
open source purism (i.e. whether React should migrate to the Apache license to
make it more compatible). But instead of having these discussions we get
ridiculous unfounded opinion pieces by yet another "dude with an opinion" who
didn't even bother validating his basic premises.

------
franciscop
The author is making assumptions about what Open Source is and what should or
shouldn't be. While many developers would like Open Source to be about
"creating communities to build better software together" (myself included),
open source just means that everyone can read the code.

Different developers and companies might use Open Source for different reason,
included but not limited to: reduce Q&A, brand relevance, increase hiring
power, strategic positioning, ideals that code should be _libre_, etc. Some
companies and devs might even want several of those!

In this line, Facebook is a private corporation who I think we all agree their
main reason for releasing React.js or any code at all doesn't seem to be
purely idealistic. I would say strategic position (the best tool in the dev
world, notably against Angular) and increasing their hiring power are really
high within their reasons to release Open Source.

It is patently absurd to tell companies what to do and patronizing to tell
developers what to do. Also, something that I don't see anyone arguing
for/against is why so many big companies, even ones competing with Facebook,
can use React.js freely and without worries? It's a point that anyone arguing
against React is conveniently ignoring but I'd love to hear about.

~~~
mhw
I don't disagree with your general point, but I don't think we can ascribe a
singular objective to Facebook as an entire organisation.

It was quite clear from the discussion around the recent github issue asking
them to consider relicensing that there are many parties internal to Facebook
with a say in the decision, and it's unlikely they all agree on everything.
The React developer's motives for releasing React as open source are probably
more along the lines of "creating communities to build better software
together", and there are obviously others within Facebook who are motivated by
protecting Facebook from lawsuits. What we see on the outside is the resulting
compromise. See Dan Abramov's comments in the issue, particularly [1] & [2]

1:
[https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/10191#issuecomment-...](https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/10191#issuecomment-316223034)
2:
[https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/10191#issuecomment-...](https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/10191#issuecomment-316739812)

~~~
franciscop
Sure, I totally agree. What I tried to express is that there is probably a
hiring and brand push as well for keeping React Open Source, not that it is
the only one.

------
scandox
Trust. Trust. Trust and Trust again. My brain becomes exhausted within seconds
of reading a licence. Not just because I'm lazy, but because I know that
however closely I think I'm reading it, I probably won't be reading it closely
enough to be 100% sure of my conclusions (viz. the differences of opinion here
from people that actually have read this thing).

So what do I do? I trust certain organisations and I don't trust others.

No-one in their right mind can trust Facebook. You might as well trust the
Ocean.

~~~
pluma
Here's an idea: if you intend to lock people into a technology so you can sue
them later, would you

a) build a small library that encourages modular code, has tons of escape
hatches to use other libraries and has so few concepts it actually encourages
learning the language and solving problems outside the library instead? Or

b) build a large monolith that comes with dozens of idiosyncratic concepts and
its own way to solve every problem so you build your entire application inside
of it?

If I was a patent troll, I would create Angular, not React.

I don't trust Google, I don't trust Facebook, I don't trust Tilde, I don't
trust Evan You. But at least with React I'm not deeply invested in non-
transferable knowledge and have easy migration paths if I ever need to move
away from it.

~~~
scandox
Probably why I'm still using Backbone - and actively pondering other options!

~~~
pluma
You think there aren't patents covering Backbone?

Or _any_ other part of your applications?

~~~
scandox
My concern isn't with Patents per se. It's mainly with the good faith of the
originator of a particular piece of code. I mean yes there could be Patents
covering everything and anything I ever do, but how would I assess such a
thing. I haven't got much control over that side of things.

However, I can exercise judgement on the source. And my judgement on Facebook
is that I never saw them do anything I liked.

------
sheetjs
There was a time when React was Apache v2!
[https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/3bbed150ab58a07b0c4fa...](https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/3bbed150ab58a07b0c4faf64126b4c9349eecfea/LICENSE)
shows that license.

Has anyone seriously explored forking React from the last Apache v2 version?

~~~
chrisco255
If they published React under Apache v2 at one point in time, how can they
later re-release under a new license and claim patent rights on it then?
Since, assuming whatever patents they own covered this version of React as
well...wouldn't that be considered prior art?

~~~
hdra
From what I understood, It is not a patent on React. As far as I can tell
nothing about React is patented... and that is not the discussion over the
past few days has been about.

This whole shebang has nothing to do with React itself, or the "technology"
that React uses or anything, but more about the way many FB's open source
libraries are licensed, one of which is React.

The license specify that you are free to use React as you would use a BSD
licensed software, provided that you never sue FB for a patent. That means, if
you use React, and you happen to own a patent for something that FB utilises,
you can't sue FB without losing your React license. So, your option is either
suck it up and let FB use your patented thing for free, or rewrite your
software to take React out of it, and then proceed with the lawsuit.

~~~
Lazare
> That means, if you use React, and you happen to own a patent for something
> that FB utilises, you can't sue FB without losing your React license.

Correction: Without losing your license to use any _patents_ on React.
Which...

> As far as I can tell nothing about React is patented...

I agree. Which means the entire issue is a huge paper tiger; you lose your
right to use something that doesn't seem to exist.

~~~
hdra
I wouldn't say it's entirely paper tiger though, given that it also discourage
you from exercising any patent you have against Facebook, no matter how
legitimate the patent is.

I'm neither a native English speaker nor a lawyer to really understand the
wording in the legalese, or if it only cover software patent or patents in
general, but I think that clause is pretty broad.

~~~
Lazare
Here's the thing:

If you have a potential patent claim against Facebook (or any other large
entity) you know that they will, as a matter of course, dig through their
enormous stockpile of patents looking for some counter-claims to make the
second you file. Given the size of that stockpile, they're probably going to
end up with a sizeable stack, so you need to engage in some serious due
diligence before filing to evaluate the strength of your claims and the
strength of their likely claims.

All the React patent grant means is that, _IF_ this happens, they can add any
React-based patents to the pile, if any exist. I rather suspect that there
_are_ no React-based patents, but it doesn't really matter if they are,
because statistically speaking, it's not going to materially change the size
of the stack. (Not using React entirely also won't materially change the size
of the stack; any hypothetical React patents probably apply to whatever
hypothetical non-React tech you used instead.)

> it also discourage you from exercising any patent you have against Facebook

No, what discourages you from exercising a patent against Facebook is that
_they 're Facebook_, and they have vastly more money, lawyers, and patents
than you do. The potential React patents are the least of your worries.

------
jasonkester
I really like the idea behind this license.

They want to see a world where software patents no longer exist. So they write
a term into their licensing that makes it really difficult for people who _do_
like software patents to use their stuff.

I think I will move my projects over to a similar license. The only thing I
would change would be to broaden it to invalidate if your company sued
_anybody_ over _any_ patent.

If everybody did that, maybe software patents would finally go away.

~~~
imtringued
>Facebook claims that if every company adopted a React-like license, that
software patents as we know it would basically die.

If you think patents shouldn't exist then why is the purpose of the license to
protect a single company from patent lawsuits. Why isn't the license covering
any patent lawsuits of any kind to any party like the ASL does? Why does the
license only protect facebook? What if there are patents that apply to react
that facebook doesn't own? Patent trolls can't sue facebook but they can still
sue users of react and continue to use react.

>If everybody did that, maybe software patents would finally go away. No
because facebook can still sue you for other software patents for internal
software they didn't release.

Facebook's patent grant is a halfassed solution. They are either outright
malicious and merely acting in self interest or blatantly incompetent. But
since they are unwilling to change the license and patent grant I'm betting on
the former.

~~~
nojvek
Facebook's licence is as half assed as the free Internet they wanted to bring
into India and some African countries. It only benefits Facebook and comes
with strings attached.

------
vim_wannabe
Does this mean I should primarily use services from startups that use React,
so that they won't get acquired and the service shut down?

~~~
chippy
Also keep monitoring them for when they unviel their latest UI change for
usability improvements which sublty removes React for some other framework.
This change would be the canary in the mine and would probably be accompanied
by changes in terms of use / privacy policy with some subtle word changes. One
could almost imagine this monitoring being automated... if it could be backed
up with data!

------
matthewmacleod
FUD, FUD, FUD. Pure FUD.

There are, AFAIK, no known patents on React. This means you can go ahead and
sue Facebook for patent violations to your heart's content. The license they
granted to you to use any of their patents applied to React (of which there
are none) is terminated, and you can merrily continue using React.

If this is incorrect, and Facebook actually do hold patents on React, then all
of the popular alternatives almost certainly infringe on them as well. So, the
worst-case scenario is no different.

~~~
tchaffee
> AFAIK

Should I tell that to my investors? That AFA matthewmacleod on HN knows, we
are good?

> then all of the popular alternatives almost certainly infringe on them as
> well.

But the lawsuit would be against those alternatives directly and not my
company? I'm not sure about this, but I'm not also sure why we should be
taking advice about this issue from non-experts.

~~~
leshow
You could easily use this argument against the writer of the original blog
post. "Someone wrote a blog post saying React's license is bad"

~~~
tchaffee
That's a fair point. We really need some patent and license lawyers to weigh
in on this and willing to put some skin in the game. I think Facebook should
also be willing to change the license to clarify intent so they can't later
use the license to do something other than what they claim they want to do:
make software patents useless.

~~~
EdwardMSmith
An IP lawyer has: [https://medium.com/@dwalsh.sdlr/react-facebook-and-the-
revok...](https://medium.com/@dwalsh.sdlr/react-facebook-and-the-revokable-
patent-license-why-its-a-paper-25c40c50b562)

~~~
tchaffee
Thanks. I'm already aware of that article. What I meant by some skin in the
game is the opposite of what the author included at the end of that article:

"Disclaimer: As with everything in law, I reserve the right to throw every
word out like yesterday’s newspaper if presented with new information or a
recent decision by a non-caffeinated judge. Hubris and the law make for bad
bedfellows. If you have information or arguments that I didn’t consider, make
them below! I will update this blog if any new information changes my
opinion."

------
chrisco255
Do most software startups even have patentable technology? I'm rather curious
about this. Most consumer and SaaS apps I know of are built on non-patented
software so I generally question this advice.

The fridge example was a case in point of how ridiculously low the odds of any
company getting into patent litigation with Facebook are. To go to battle with
FB you're gonna need millions and it's going to take years. That's not a light
decision.

~~~
snarfy
It's purely anecdata but I've worked for a dozen different companies in my
career. The only companies that are still around today are the companies that
had patents.

~~~
chrisco255
I worked for a $5 billion 25 year old company that had no patents to its name
(until this year). What matters is execution and distribution, above and
beyond patents, especially in software.

------
danielrhodes
Are companies getting asked about React in M&A due diligence or has any lawyer
recommended this, because otherwise this post is pure clickbait.

~~~
rtpg
code licenses come up in even simple funding rounds. IP happens in due
diligence to avoid "oh actually this one freelancer owns all the code"-style
situations.

------
thomyorkie
> If all giants agreed to open source under the “BSD + patents” scheme, cross-
> adoption would grind to a halt. Why? If Google released Project X under “BSD
> + Patents”, and Amazon really liked it, rather than adopting it and losing
> their right to ever sue Google for patents, they would go off and build it
> on their own.

This seems like a reasonable argument, but it doesn't seem to have deterred
several big name companies from using React. Airbnb, netflix, and dropbox for
example.

~~~
chaostheory
Developers are not lawyers, and developers and lawyers don't talk to each
other all the time. I wonder how many of those companies even bothered to
check the license, given how fast they have to move? I've been guilty of that
as well in the past.

~~~
traek
> I wonder how many of those companies even bothered to check the license,
> given how fast they have to move?

Airbnb, Netflix, and Dropbox? I guarantee you all of those companies have
lawyers that reviewed the license.

~~~
chaostheory
Sure they have lawyers, but I highly doubt they reviewed it and I don't blame
them since open source licenses have been pretty vanilla for over a decade
now. The only companies that actually even really reviewed open source in
terms of legal implications were extremely risk averse ones like the
telecoms... in the 90s and early 2000s. Of course I could be wrong especially
if any of those companies use a tool that checks licenses (I have my doubts).

------
pluma
Aside from the validity of the article's claims about patents (see my other
tirades about that) I'm not sure the point even makes sense.

React, the library, is at its core a glorified templating system. It provides
plenty of escape hatches that make migration as well as inclusion of foreign
UI components and libraries a breeze. It's stupidly simple to migrate away
from.

If you are a high valuation startup looking to get acquired for your
technology (rather than acquihired) I find it extremely unlikely your
valuation hinges on your frontend code. And even if it does I find it
extremely unlikely your frontend is tied so closely to React you won't be able
to spend, say, 1MM replacing React with Vue or what have you (maybe at the
cost of a little pizzazz).

If your frontend is animation-heavy, that likely doesn't live in React land.
If your frontend is mostly static, it should be trivial to replace React as
well.

If your startup is valuable, being sued over some frontend library is probably
the least of your concerns. If the company looking to acquire you has enough
cash in the bank to sue Facebook, they have far more than enough cash in the
bank to replace React.

~~~
thepompano
Just throwing this out there - replacing an entire front-end monolith
framework in large part depends on the size/scale of the application, and how
well it was implemented to begin with.

~~~
pluma
Okay, so maybe the recommendation should be "build your app around the
assumption you may have to swap individual dependencies out in the future".

Amazingly enough, this recommendation is also beneficial if it turns out there
are patents covering Angular, Vue or Ember.

------
amelius
I'm _not_ using React for _another_ reason. I don't agree with the way they
treat their users (i.e., as a product).

------
npad
What happened to the "software patents are ridiculous and should never be
granted" argument?

Now it seems that the same sort of people advancing the anti-patent argument
are angry about FB's licence. This seems like pretty muddled thinking.

~~~
matt4077
It seems like the times have changed in that regard. If you hung around on
slashdot in the 2000s, it was commonly accepted that software patents are bad,
and that the GPL was more good than bad.

Now, it appears there are many people thinking they will at some point get
filthy rich with their patents. And I've frequently seen the GPL being derided
as some sort of communist plot.

It's good to see that at least the large companies are still on the side of
openness, although I fear what will happen when today's commentators become
tomorrow's CEOs. Imagine something like the nodejs ecosystem, except now
you'll have to buy a $1000/year subscription to the "node modules starter
edition".

------
hoodoof
"So you've sewn up the market eh? Here's your check for $500million."

"But don't you want to know what technology we built it with?"

"No."

------
epicide
> If there is no chance of igniting a community, there is no reason to open
> source.

I see most of this article as a dangerous way of thinking, but especially the
above.

The mentality I get from this quote (especially combined with its context) is
basically: I should only open source something I'm working on if I can build a
community around it (that I control/influence/benefit from).

Open sourcing your software should be the default. If I make a tool or small
library/function, I would more look for a reason NOT to open source it. When I
can't think of one, I will open it up, regardless of whether or not there is a
"chance of igniting a community".

------
BukhariH
Can someone please share what patents cover react?

Because if they're revoking patents that don't cover react then there should
be no problem to continue using react right?

~~~
binaryapparatus
If I understand that license correctly, it is not 'patents that cover react',
it is 'any facebook patent, present or future'. Also as explained in the
article, it is also about my patents if I have any, in case facebook tries
violating them. Far wider than 'react patents'.

~~~
BukhariH
I understand that but here's the scenario I'm talking about:

\- I use React for my startup's dashboard

\- I sue facebook for violating my startup's patent without removing my react
dashboard first

Now, what patents can facebook use to counter sue me that they couldn't sue me
with anyway had I not used react?

~~~
yozel
Facebook won't counter sue you. They don't have to. You just lose your right
to use React, due to its license.

~~~
ec109685
That's not true:
[https://code.facebook.com/pages/850928938376556](https://code.facebook.com/pages/850928938376556)

Facebook can't take away your rights to use React under the BSD license, no
matter what you do.

------
skrebbel
This is a badly written article full of FUD. It's written by an angry backend
engineer, not a lawyer, and it shows.

He goes from this:

> _The instant you sue Facebook, your patent rights for React — and any other
> Facebook ‘open source’ technology you happen to use) — are automatically
> revoked._

To this:

> _If you use React, you cannot go against Facebook for any patent they hold.
> Full period._

"Full period", really? Because the first does not imply the second. This is
now how patent law works.

Now, I'm not a lawyer either, but broad assertions like these should tell you
that there's emotion at work here, not reason. In his fourth update, he made a
list of companies that add something about patents to their open source
licenses, implying that somehow that that proves something.

So the thing that people confuse here is patents and copyrights. The BSD
license grants you the right to use works copyrighted by Facebook people and
contributors. The patents clause, further, promises that should Facebook hold
any patents that cover the OSS, they won't use them against you, unless you
sue them first.

There is the whole idea floating around the internet that a BSD license
somehow ensures that nobody will sue you for patent infringement. I really
don't understand where this comes from. Hell, Android is Apache Licensed
(which includes a patent grant) and still anyone who makes an Android phone
has to pay license fees to all kinds of patent trolls (Microsoft most
notably). These things are totally separate.

So first, if you sue Facebook for patents, you lose their patent grant (so
they can sue you back, which everybody always does anyway - it's the only
defense companies have in patent wars). But you don't lose the BSD license or
anything. That's not how it works. All you lose is Facebook's promise not to
sue you because you use React.

Secondly, and this is the core point, patents don't cover code, they cover
ideas. Any patents that Facebook might have that, right or wrong, cover React,
will surely be written broad enough that they also cover Preact, Inferno,
Vue.js probably, and I bet also Angular. Not using React but one of these
other libraries therefore makes no difference - in both cases, Facebook can
use their React-ish patents to sue you.

To my understanding, patent lawsuits rarely get to the nitty gritty details of
actual patents in reality. It does not matter whether a Facebook patent
written broadly actually covers Vue.js or not - in practice, more often than
not, companies will compare the height of the patent stacks they have, and
agree on a settlement based on that.

All this patent grant says is that Facebook gets to use their patents that
cover OSS to make their stack of paper a bit higher. Like they would if they
hadn't made a patent grant at all.

So, repeat after me: using open source does not shield you from patent
infringment lawsuits.

------
CityWanderer
What makes the PATENTS file legally binding? If I install React via NPM/Yarn,
or even as a dependency of another project, I will not see this file.

LICENSE is a pretty common convention and you could argue I should seek out
this file in every one of my dependencies' dependencies - but how would I know
to look for PATENTS?

Are all statements in the code base legally binding? Could they be hidden in a
source file somewhere?

~~~
Vinnl
Not a lawyer, but I can imagine it can be expected that you do some due
diligence before installing it through npm - like checking the website whether
their license allows you to use it, and on what terms.

~~~
CityWanderer
If what you say is true then I think our tool chains are failing us.

My React project has 1,015 dependencies (directories in node_modules). If I
didn't have locked versions then every minor automatic update could bring in
more dependencies without me knowing.

Can anyone honestly say they've done such due diligence?

~~~
Silhouette
_Can anyone honestly say they 've done such due diligence?_

That seems doubtful.

And that's a real and potentially serious problem, because IP laws typically
don't contain any exemptions for code you're using that infringes someone's IP
rights just because it was contributed by a third party.

------
vladimir-y
Can the title be generalized? Like don't use anything from FB?

~~~
CityWanderer
This is true, all of Facebook's projects have the same PATENTS file. The title
is the most clickbaity though, which is the intention of the piece.

~~~
u320
Yarn, RocksDB and ZStandard does not.

------
codingdave
Even if everything in this article were 100% correct, which is clearly
arguable, think about how this would truly play out. Company X would sue
Facebook. Facebook would sue them back for using React... and then... lawsuits
would ensue. Attorneys would do their things. Cases would be argued out of
court. Lots of legal stuff would be going on, and plenty of time would be had
for the engineers to select and move to a new framework.

Yes, I think there are problems with the license, and I'm not using React. But
do I really think those problems will result in some scenario where you have
an overnight show-stopper of your business because of it? Extremely unlikely.

Startups need to stop fearing the law and start understanding it.

------
k__
What is the safe alternative here?

I mean probably FB got patents.

and

Probably they have at least one that covers things React can do.

Almost every framework moved to components and virtual DOM.

So there is a big chance that any framework out there could infringe some of
these React patents.

So their either can

revoke your React license when you sue them

or

Sue you over patent infringement if you don't use React

~~~
Lazare
You're mostly right, except:

> revoke your React license when you sue them

Incorrect; all they can do is revoke your _patent_ grant and then sue you for
patent infringement. They can't "revoke your React license".

So the difference is, if you use React they can only sue you for patent
infringement if you sue them first; if you use something else they can sue you
no matter what...

...if they have a patent on React. Despite your breezy assertion, patents are
public, people have looked, and none have been found.

~~~
k__
So other libraries can't be sued because there are no patents to be infringed?

And it doesn't matter that FB terminates the patent grant if you sue them,
because there were no patents to start with?

------
afro88
There were a lot of people in the older thread about the patents stuff saying
things like "well, are you ever going to sue Facebook?? You don't need to
worry about the patents stuff".

But consider this: Facebook do something disastrous, like leak a bunch of
private or financial data and it affects you really badly. There's a class
action against Facebook. Now you can't join it, because you don't wanna
rewrite your app without React to ensure Facebook can't counter sue over a
patent that may or may not exist on React.

~~~
rnijveld
Except that the patent grant states that the grant only voids if you sue (or
are contributing money to such a cause) because of patents. The grant is still
valid if you sue Facebook for non-patent related issues.

------
guelo
This doesn't convince me. As a consumer patents and patent lawsuits are almost
always bad. Patents reduce options in the market, lawsuits between companies
waste resources, startups being acquired reduce market options. The only real
argument is that it will prevent communities from forming. But I don't buy it.
Open source needs competition too, monolythic ecosystems are bad. As an
example, Apple didn't want to contribute to gcc so they created LLVM which is
a boon to everybody.

~~~
h8liu
apple did not create llvm. llvm started as an academic project, and apple took
advantage from its ecosystem -- same as many other companies did.

------
tchaffee
I wonder if Facebook's claims that they are doing this in order to make
patents useless would have legal standing. In other words, if they become
"evil" about this patent clause at some point in the future and try to enforce
this in the bad ways that people are imagining _might_ happen, then doesn't
Facebook's clearly and publicly stated intentions hurt any claim they would
make which goes against those intentions?

------
williamle8300
Facebook is like the Disney in the tech world. They want to be that trove of
intellectual property.

They take free-to-use stuff (Disney is cheap ripoff of Hans Christian
Anderson's fables), and create "magical" stuff that they protect with their
arsenal of lawyers.

If Facebook is able to pull the wool over our eyes this time... OSS is gonna
be in a bad place in the next century just like how Disney single-handedly
lobbied to change public domain laws in America.

------
blackoil
Someone with knowledge should bring clarity to all this noise!

My understanding is, if I sue FB for some patents, they can sue me back with
any patents they may hold on React. We do not know of any such patents they
own. So practically I am no safer if I use preact/vue or even Angular, since
they may own some patents that cover those tech.

tldr; Do not sue FB unless you have muscles.

------
bitL
It truly seems non-mature businesses should stop relying on open-source with
"baggage" and utilize only free software (AGPL3+) that has dual-licensing for
commercial use with support as e.g. in Qt, unless you are 100% sure for your
product lifecycle you won't get into direct business collision with the
"baggage" author.

~~~
DonbunEf7
AGPL is too toxic to use. Fortunately, there's not much compelling software
using it, so it's easy to avoid.

Businesses should shun AGPL, period.

~~~
bitL
Why is AGPL toxic? I'd advise all developers to do dual AGPL/commercial
license for all their open source projects. AGPL would guarantee that their
work is not used by others without giving back anything; commercial one to
keep them afloat and allow proper business.

------
hoodoof
"Look, we were going to buy you for $500million but our thorough due diligence
has turned over a rather nasty stone that you probably wished we didn't look
under. You know what I mean don't you? YES - we found out your dirty little
secret that you're using ReactJS. Due to this, we have decided to pull the
deal in favor of your competitor who uses AngularJS. What you need to
understand is that although you've cornered the market with your superb
software and business model, we are dead serious about never buying companies
that have built on ReactJS. We have a deep, and we think entirely valid,
concern that Facebook will, at a point in time, suddenly pull the carpet from
under you and Mark Zuckerberg will be laughing at us saying 'suckers... we
sure got you with the whole ReactJS ruse didn't we!'"

"We're also not very enthused about you building on Amazon - surprised you'd
take a risk like that, it doesn't indicate much business sense."

"Sorry to say, but your business, due to the ReactJS decision, is worth $0."

~~~
kybernetikos
If you're using angular, you're almost certainly using Typescript which
contains this less extreme version of the same sort of patent clause:

3\. Grant of Patent License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this
License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-
exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this
section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import,
and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license applies only to those
patent claims licensable by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by
their Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their Contribution(s) with
the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted. 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.

As I understand it, Angular in general doesn't contain a patent grant at all.
Believing that that is superior to a grant that is removed in certain
circumstances requires some contentious legal argument that as far as I know
has not been demonstrated to stand up in court.

~~~
zilian
But TypeScript compiles to JS right ? How can one prove it's "used" in
production ?

------
jlebrech
my reason is that your app doesn't need the whiz bang reactiveness of react of
any other frontend framework just yet. it's just extra overhead.

------
halfnibble
I've been saying this for months. Don't use React!

------
notaboutdave
Easy workaround: Install Preact. No code changes required, at least not for me
last year.

~~~
k__
even the creator of preact said he doesn't know if he infringed FB patents
with the creation of preact, because nobody knows what React covering patents
FB holds.

~~~
kybernetikos
And in this, the situation is exactly the same as with any front end library,
or even not using one at all. It's almost impossible to know if you're
infringing any patents.

------
dimillian
Yeah because small startups will totally go after Facebook. Make sense. Wow.

~~~
askmike
Google looking to acquire small startup X? Not anymore because they use React.
Wow.

