<story><title>Facebook React.js License</title><url>http://www.elcaminolegal.com/single-post/2016/10/04/Facebook-Reactjs-License</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lucb1e</author><text>The way I read it, it&amp;#x27;s not evil.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a known and deliberate shortcoming of many licenses (e.g. BSD) not to include patent stuff because it makes everything unnecessarily complex. There was recently an article about why BSD and MIT are so popular, and it&amp;#x27;s because they&amp;#x27;re concise and understandable. There is a reason WTFPL exists and some developers resort to it as a way to avoid legalese.&lt;p&gt;Facebook clearly was aware of this &amp;quot;shortcoming&amp;quot; and being a big player, they might have wanted to be nice and say &amp;quot;we won&amp;#x27;t sue you for patent infringement if it turns out we have a patent on something React does&amp;quot;. Then the managers went &amp;quot;but what if they sue us? Patents are not only for offense but also our defense, we would weaken our defense.&amp;quot; And so the clause of &amp;quot;except if you sue us first&amp;quot; came into being.&lt;p&gt;And now this fuss about the patent part making it not an open source license? Oh come on.&lt;p&gt;I really don&amp;#x27;t like Facebook as a company, but this bickering is silly.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>erichocean</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;The way I read it, it&amp;#x27;s not evil.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;No, it&amp;#x27;s evil, full stop.&lt;p&gt;Facebook&amp;#x27;s patent policy means, in no uncertain terms: if you have a patent, they have a worldwide, royalty-free right to use it. Don&amp;#x27;t want to give them that? Well, until you remove all usage of Facebook&amp;#x27;s &amp;quot;open source&amp;quot; code, that&amp;#x27;s the situation.&lt;p&gt;Note: RocksDB also has this problem, which means CockroachDB is also infected. Tread carefully.&lt;p&gt;-----&lt;p&gt;Note to downvoters: No one has a problem with Apache 2-style patent-retaliation provisions. Facebook could solve this problem TODAY by switching to that.&lt;p&gt;They don&amp;#x27;t because they don&amp;#x27;t want to retaliate, they want access to unrelated patents from third-parties at zero cost, with a credible threat to damage those third-parties if they want to retain their unrelated patent rights. There&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;literally&lt;/i&gt; no other reason for Facebook to demand terms beyond Apache 2 than to do what I just described.&lt;p&gt;The Apache 2 license protects Facebook and third-parties and is 100% ethical. Facebook&amp;#x27;s patent position is not, for the reasons I&amp;#x27;ve stated above. The community, IMO, should shun Facebook LOUDLY until they relent and stop this bullshit.&lt;p&gt;-----&lt;p&gt;Update 2: It&amp;#x27;s actually worse, because Facebook tends to do this bullshit on stuff like RocksDB and React which are &lt;i&gt;incorporated&lt;/i&gt; in other software that you use to run your business.&lt;p&gt;Using a React-based dashboard widget for your ElasticSearch cluster? Good luck suing Facebook for patent-infringement, because guess what? &lt;i&gt;You agreed to let them infringe by using it&lt;/i&gt;, even though you didn&amp;#x27;t intend to.&lt;p&gt;Facebook&amp;#x27;s patent policy requires &lt;i&gt;constant&lt;/i&gt; policing to avoid. Like I said: EVIL.</text></comment>
<story><title>Facebook React.js License</title><url>http://www.elcaminolegal.com/single-post/2016/10/04/Facebook-Reactjs-License</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lucb1e</author><text>The way I read it, it&amp;#x27;s not evil.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a known and deliberate shortcoming of many licenses (e.g. BSD) not to include patent stuff because it makes everything unnecessarily complex. There was recently an article about why BSD and MIT are so popular, and it&amp;#x27;s because they&amp;#x27;re concise and understandable. There is a reason WTFPL exists and some developers resort to it as a way to avoid legalese.&lt;p&gt;Facebook clearly was aware of this &amp;quot;shortcoming&amp;quot; and being a big player, they might have wanted to be nice and say &amp;quot;we won&amp;#x27;t sue you for patent infringement if it turns out we have a patent on something React does&amp;quot;. Then the managers went &amp;quot;but what if they sue us? Patents are not only for offense but also our defense, we would weaken our defense.&amp;quot; And so the clause of &amp;quot;except if you sue us first&amp;quot; came into being.&lt;p&gt;And now this fuss about the patent part making it not an open source license? Oh come on.&lt;p&gt;I really don&amp;#x27;t like Facebook as a company, but this bickering is silly.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gbuk2013</author><text>I think you should read the article again. What it argues is that the licence essentially means that you can&amp;#x27;t initiate a lawsuit against FB for infringing one of your patents (which may have nothing to do with Reaft) without losing your React licence.&lt;p&gt;Now whether that bothers you or not depends on your individual circumstances and the sanity of your particular legal jurisdiction, but it certainly would be something of interest to any corporate legal team.</text></comment>