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.
This seems to be the case: the wording is pretty obscure and IANAL, but the risk if you use React and sue Facebook for patent infringement should only be that they can counter-sue you for any patents they may hold that apply to React.
And be careful: if Facebook has any patents related to React, they could very well cover also the React alternatives: I seriously doubt that eg the author of Vue.js researched if they were violating and FB React-related patents.
> A "Necessary Claim" is a claim of a patent owned by Facebook that is necessarily infringed by the Software standing alone.
This should mean that the patent grant only covers you from being sued for any patents covering React technology, and that is the only protection you lose if you sue Facebook.
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.
As a small startup, I absolutely love Facebook's React patent licensing. It gives me the advantage to use React (Native) while my bigger VC-funded competitors can't. It is like the opposite of economy of scale, haha.
(PS: i have no plan to be acquired or raise a VC round or file any patent)
The patents clause does not restrict to software pattents, it applies to any patent. If I had any "normal" patents, I would stay far away from any open source project with this patent license (also I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice). I would never allow Facebook (or any company for that matter) to limit my legal rights. I understand that they need to protect themselves, but not at the cost of the damage that they are doing to the open source community.
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.
> 2) which patents are relevant to each framework/library (i.e. React and various its alternatives)
Facebook needs to come out and give us these answers. There are two scenarios:
1) They have "secret" patents, and the reason they hoard them is to use them as offense when being sued, forcing the suing party (whether "meritless" or meritful) significant monetary loss to rewrite their software with the goal of killing the suit, or,
2) They do not have any patents pertaining to the technology, and so if this is the case, why is the patents clause even present? Why all this hush-hush and incredible resistance to change?
It's dodgy as heck. From Facebook's POV of 1, it's fantastic, but _only to Facebook_ - that's why it's there, it's great strategy. For everybody else? Not so much. Either way, they are being immoral and unethical, especially towards their foundations (free and open source software) and user community and ultimately leads to fragmentation as people try to escape the clause (see Preact, Inferno, et al).
Everyone should have the right to write opinions about anything, even you.
The only situation that I think that you do not have this right is exactly when your opinion is that others shouldn't have this right.
The BSD + Patents license doesn't imply anything about Facebook's own patents. React may not itself have any patents; that's not the point. The patents involved here are those not owned by Facebook. Facebook doesn't need patents on React to revoke your license to use React if you sue Facebook for patent infringement.
Edit: I see how my reading was wrong. The LICENSE file is still the same old 3-Clause BSD. The PATENTS file is what's new and different.
1) I am not a lawyer, and my article simply analyses the compromises a company makes when adopting React (and other OSS projects licensed under the same terms), without going into Patent Law.
Some lawyers think that the patent-related legal provisions are not enforceable anyway, but then it begs to ask the question. If they are not enforceable, why is Facebook so adamant about keeping this license model? Surely there's something else behind this, some motivation.
2) Facebook claims their motivation is reducing patent litigation. And they claim that making this model widespread would benefit the entire industry.
Let's put that in context. They adopted this license in 2014 and, in the last 3 years, no other company aside from Palantir has followed suit.
I analysed 75+ projects from 35 companies (link: [1]), and none uses this license model. What's going on?
As I argue in my article, this kind of license may hurt the Open Source industry, more than it will benefit it.
3) No, I do not know (a) what applicable patents FB holds with regards to React, nor (b) those that may be in the works, nor (c) those they intend to apply for. Likely neither do you.
And that's the whole point of the article.
Most people and startups don't have access to an expert patent lawyer. Even if they did, would it be a good use of resources to engage them to evaluate the adoption of a frontend UI layer? No.
So just stay away of problematic stuff.
4) And as a result of the above, my stance is that I prefer to use a stack that grants me any patents unconditionally, or maybe with weak patent retaliation like the ASLv2 license, that's OK, i.e. I sue the holder over patents covering only the work I am using, I lose the patent grant for the work I'm using. Simple and symmetrical
5) Here's some food for thought. Would you rather relinquish your IP assertion rights with this "BSD-3 + strong patent retaliation" model, or would you rather pay $99/dev for a commercial license on React and not give Facebook any control?
6) Facebook exists thanks to Open Source. Zuck implemented it using the LAMP stack back in 2004. Would he have used LAMP if it entailed relinquishing any rights to initiate patent litigation?
---
As I said, I am not giving people legal advise, I'm just voicing out my opinion. But I do see a lot of React fans like you (based on your Github [2]) trying to diminish the arguments appealing to lack of authority and what not, without understanding the logic behind my argument.
Picking an OSS UI view layer should not require involving your legal advisors, don't you think?
I didn't read the whole article, so my comment is about the PATENTS file and not the article. The situation isn't just about React. The PATENTS file is found in many repos, and it's leaking into the entire open source ecosystem due to dependencies. Those kinds of conditions should not be added to Free software licenses.
Totally agree with
`Oh, wait, maybe "Facebook holds any software patents on the Virtual DOM or the React APIs" `
Writing articles is a mean to become famous!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Really? That's your argument? If there are no public patents today, does it mean there's none in the works?
What tells you there won't be a patent tomorrow?
Let me ask differently. Assuming you're a software engineer, do you pick your stack based on the status quo? Or do you pick a future-proof stack, based not only in its position today, but its projection tomorrow?
What CAN happen today is not as important as what COULD happen tomorrow, based on the legal provisions you're agreeing to by adopting 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.
This is absolutely incorrect. It depends on the content of the patent. For example, if FB filed a patent for React Mobile, it would not affect Preact and Inferno, as these frameworks do not deal with mobile rendering.
Then why do they bother the whole React community? Do people sue Facebook just because they use React and they spent hundreds of their lawyers hours in order to prove that there's no violation?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Amazon is the poster child of idiotic software patents, see 1-click buying. If this makes their software development more expensive, I'll be really glad.
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.
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.
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".
> 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".
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.
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?
[+] [-] cbhl|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] danmaz74|8 years ago|reply
And be careful: if Facebook has any patents related to React, they could very well cover also the React alternatives: I seriously doubt that eg the author of Vue.js researched if they were violating and FB React-related patents.
Edit: here the link to the patent grant https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/master/PATENTS
> A "Necessary Claim" is a claim of a patent owned by Facebook that is necessarily infringed by the Software standing alone.
This should mean that the patent grant only covers you from being sued for any patents covering React technology, and that is the only protection you lose if you sue Facebook.
[+] [-] raulk|8 years ago|reply
I analysed 75+ OSS projects from 35 companies, and Facebook is practically alone.
https://medium.com/@raulk/list-of-companies-and-popular-proj...
[+] [-] ngsayjoe|8 years ago|reply
(PS: i have no plan to be acquired or raise a VC round or file any patent)
[+] [-] oh_sigh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rvdmei|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pluma|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] alvivi|8 years ago|reply
Following your words, you should not be even allowed to comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
Seriously, stop this.
[+] [-] Mayzie|8 years ago|reply
> 2) which patents are relevant to each framework/library (i.e. React and various its alternatives)
Facebook needs to come out and give us these answers. There are two scenarios:
1) They have "secret" patents, and the reason they hoard them is to use them as offense when being sued, forcing the suing party (whether "meritless" or meritful) significant monetary loss to rewrite their software with the goal of killing the suit, or,
2) They do not have any patents pertaining to the technology, and so if this is the case, why is the patents clause even present? Why all this hush-hush and incredible resistance to change?
It's dodgy as heck. From Facebook's POV of 1, it's fantastic, but _only to Facebook_ - that's why it's there, it's great strategy. For everybody else? Not so much. Either way, they are being immoral and unethical, especially towards their foundations (free and open source software) and user community and ultimately leads to fragmentation as people try to escape the clause (see Preact, Inferno, et al).
[+] [-] felipelemos|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
[+] [-] kalefranz|8 years ago|reply
Edit: I see how my reading was wrong. The LICENSE file is still the same old 3-Clause BSD. The PATENTS file is what's new and different.
[+] [-] sametmax|8 years ago|reply
- other people will stop saying bullshits about computing;
- nerds will stop learning new things by trials and error.
None of those will ever happen, so make peace with the fact it will happen more and more.
[+] [-] tchaffee|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bflesch|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] raulk|8 years ago|reply
1) I am not a lawyer, and my article simply analyses the compromises a company makes when adopting React (and other OSS projects licensed under the same terms), without going into Patent Law.
Some lawyers think that the patent-related legal provisions are not enforceable anyway, but then it begs to ask the question. If they are not enforceable, why is Facebook so adamant about keeping this license model? Surely there's something else behind this, some motivation.
2) Facebook claims their motivation is reducing patent litigation. And they claim that making this model widespread would benefit the entire industry.
Let's put that in context. They adopted this license in 2014 and, in the last 3 years, no other company aside from Palantir has followed suit.
I analysed 75+ projects from 35 companies (link: [1]), and none uses this license model. What's going on?
As I argue in my article, this kind of license may hurt the Open Source industry, more than it will benefit it.
3) No, I do not know (a) what applicable patents FB holds with regards to React, nor (b) those that may be in the works, nor (c) those they intend to apply for. Likely neither do you.
And that's the whole point of the article.
Most people and startups don't have access to an expert patent lawyer. Even if they did, would it be a good use of resources to engage them to evaluate the adoption of a frontend UI layer? No.
So just stay away of problematic stuff.
4) And as a result of the above, my stance is that I prefer to use a stack that grants me any patents unconditionally, or maybe with weak patent retaliation like the ASLv2 license, that's OK, i.e. I sue the holder over patents covering only the work I am using, I lose the patent grant for the work I'm using. Simple and symmetrical
5) Here's some food for thought. Would you rather relinquish your IP assertion rights with this "BSD-3 + strong patent retaliation" model, or would you rather pay $99/dev for a commercial license on React and not give Facebook any control?
6) Facebook exists thanks to Open Source. Zuck implemented it using the LAMP stack back in 2004. Would he have used LAMP if it entailed relinquishing any rights to initiate patent litigation?
---
As I said, I am not giving people legal advise, I'm just voicing out my opinion. But I do see a lot of React fans like you (based on your Github [2]) trying to diminish the arguments appealing to lack of authority and what not, without understanding the logic behind my argument.
Picking an OSS UI view layer should not require involving your legal advisors, don't you think?
[1] https://medium.com/@raulk/list-of-companies-and-popular-proj... [2] https://github.com/pluma
EDIT: added point 6.
[+] [-] JoshMnem|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] romanovcode|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alifa|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emilfihlman|8 years ago|reply
Please reflect on how you are hurting everyone, not helping.
[+] [-] abhineet97|8 years ago|reply
This isn't highly relevant but it can be a probable cause for bias.
[+] [-] franciscop|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] scandox|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] sheetjs|8 years ago|reply
Has anyone seriously explored forking React from the last Apache v2 version?
[+] [-] jasonkester|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] vim_wannabe|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chippy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matthewmacleod|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] raulk|8 years ago|reply
Really? That's your argument? If there are no public patents today, does it mean there's none in the works?
What tells you there won't be a patent tomorrow?
Let me ask differently. Assuming you're a software engineer, do you pick your stack based on the status quo? Or do you pick a future-proof stack, based not only in its position today, but its projection tomorrow?
What CAN happen today is not as important as what COULD happen tomorrow, based on the legal provisions you're agreeing to by adopting 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.
This is absolutely incorrect. It depends on the content of the patent. For example, if FB filed a patent for React Mobile, it would not affect Preact and Inferno, as these frameworks do not deal with mobile rendering.
[+] [-] buremba|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisco255|8 years ago|reply
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|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielrhodes|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thomyorkie|8 years ago|reply
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|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spraak|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danmaz74|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pluma|8 years ago|reply
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|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] npad|8 years ago|reply
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|8 years ago|reply
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|8 years ago|reply
"But don't you want to know what technology we built it with?"
"No."
[+] [-] epicide|8 years ago|reply
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|8 years ago|reply
Because if they're revoking patents that don't cover react then there should be no problem to continue using react right?
[+] [-] skrebbel|8 years ago|reply
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|8 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] vladimir-y|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CityWanderer|8 years ago|reply