After having removed the controversial patent grant, Facebook replaced BSD with MIT, because some the terms used by the MIT are closer to what defines the right of a patent holder.
MIT says: “Permission is hereby granted […] to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software”.
35 U.S. Code section 154 says: “Every patent shall contain […] a grant to the patentee, his heirs or assigns, of the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention”.
The MIT License does not include a patent grant, which is the the thing people keep emphasizing and Facebook keeps distracting from by talking about revocation.
What patents do you need granted, and why are you not up in arms about ~80% of open source projects for not granting them? And why are you distracting from this?
If there’s any problem in Facebook’s actions, then we have much bigger problems as an open source community to worry about. In this situation Facebook is following the norms of the open source community.
I’m told https://www.google.com/patents/US20170221242 goes to a relevant patent, but I haven’t evaluated it. I avoid reading pending or active patents to avoid infringing “deliberately” and being liable for enhanced damages.
I’m not concerned by open source projects because I’m not aware of any that have filed for patents.
I did not distract from that comment; I am inconveniently bound by causality.
I did not distract from that comment; I am inconveniently bound by causality.
What causality?
I quote again from it:
Basically, if you sell or license a product that requires a patent to work, courts have generally held that you grant an implied patent license for any patents that the product might require.
Do you dispute that? Evidence?
Note: I haven’t a horse in this race, am merely curious and it seems like an important enough matter to get to the bottom of.
I’m a bit confused by the comments. My understanding of the react license was that it allowed the license to be revoked if a project using it came into litigation against Facebook, but it looks like people are worried about a lack of a patent grant in the MIT License. Is anything in React patented? If not why is this of concern, what patent does anyone need a grant on to use the product without fear of legal repercussions beyond patent enforcement that could take place with or without the license?
For example, the applicant of the present disclosure has developed a “React” JavaScript® library for building user interfaces. The React system enables a user (“developer” or “programmer”) to compose reusable user interface components and subcomponents to render views. When a page or a part of a page needs to be rendered (e.g., when it is initially displayed or updated), React returns a tree of components that will eventually be rendered (for example, to HTML elements like or , or to native display elements like Image or Text elements, or, e.g., MKMapView in iOS® or ImageView in Android™). React creates a data structure mirroring the original hierarchy of views, computes any differences resulting from a change to the displayed views, and then updates the displayed hierarchy efficiently.
I’m a novice at this, so I’m wondering if someone can help explain to me…
I would’ve expected this news to be a relief for folks who were disconcerted by the prior license, and it seems like that’s not the case. Many other open-source frameworks use the MIT license (Rails, Phoenix, Vue, Angular) and I haven’t seen similar consternation (though it’s possible I just haven’t run into it).
Is the continued skepticism because the MIT license still isn’t the best choice? Or because Facebook/React threw away trust with their original license, and MIT is open-ended enough that there isn’t reason to think Facebook’s motives have sufficiently changed? Something else?
They removed the patent grant and switched to MIT. They switched to MIT because the language used in the license implies a patent grant. See my other comment here.
I don’t understand how this is a good thing; they are moving from a license that has a bad patent protection clause to a license that has no patent protection clause.
Basically, if you sell or license a product that requires a patent to work, courts have generally held that you grant an implied patent license for any patents that the product might require. If you explicitly reference patents within the license, however, then whatever terms you explicitly write into the license supersede this implied patent license. BSD+patents (and Apache 2) have explicit patent language; paradoxically, this makes them more restrictive than licenses like MIT, BSD, or GPL that don’t mention patents at all.
this makes them more restrictive than licenses like MIT, BSD, or GPL that don’t mention patents at all.
This is incorrect; the GPL has an explicit patent grant.
Lumping Facebook’s random one-off “let’s mash a weak unilateral explicit patent grant onto the BSD license” together with the carefully-designed Apache and GPL licenses is really weird. There’s a (very shaky) argument to be made that their one-off unilateral grant is worse than an implicit grant, but the idea that an explicit bilateral grant written by people who actually care about user freedom is the same thing is just … completely wrong.
I suspect people are confusing GPL with GPLv2. Inexcusable, given that GPLv3 is more than 10 years old now.
Note: GPLv2 has no explicit patent grant, but GPLv2 does mention patents. It has a clause which makes patent-encumbered GPLv2 software undistributable.
I am not a React developer but I think it’s a good thing because it’s the same license Angular and Vue use. There is no mention of patents in the MIT license but now going forward any problems you have concerning patents are the same problems you’d have if you chose angular or vue in the first place.
Is the new license text available anywhere? This announcement feels like they have written another custom license and we will be back in the same place in the next six to twelve months.
After having removed the controversial patent grant, Facebook replaced BSD with MIT, because some the terms used by the MIT are closer to what defines the right of a patent holder.
MIT says: “Permission is hereby granted […] to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software”.
35 U.S. Code section 154 says: “Every patent shall contain […] a grant to the patentee, his heirs or assigns, of the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License#Comparison_to_other_licenses
The MIT License does not include a patent grant, which is the the thing people keep emphasizing and Facebook keeps distracting from by talking about revocation.
What patents do you need granted, and why are you not up in arms about ~80% of open source projects for not granting them? And why are you distracting from this?
If there’s any problem in Facebook’s actions, then we have much bigger problems as an open source community to worry about. In this situation Facebook is following the norms of the open source community.
I’m told https://www.google.com/patents/US20170221242 goes to a relevant patent, but I haven’t evaluated it. I avoid reading pending or active patents to avoid infringing “deliberately” and being liable for enhanced damages.
I’m not concerned by open source projects because I’m not aware of any that have filed for patents.
I did not distract from that comment; I am inconveniently bound by causality.
What causality?
I quote again from it:
Do you dispute that? Evidence?
Note: I haven’t a horse in this race, am merely curious and it seems like an important enough matter to get to the bottom of.
The causality that prevents effects from preceding their causes.
Dude posted after me.
I’m a bit confused by the comments. My understanding of the react license was that it allowed the license to be revoked if a project using it came into litigation against Facebook, but it looks like people are worried about a lack of a patent grant in the MIT License. Is anything in React patented? If not why is this of concern, what patent does anyone need a grant on to use the product without fear of legal repercussions beyond patent enforcement that could take place with or without the license?
https://www.google.com/patents/US20170221242 :
I’m a novice at this, so I’m wondering if someone can help explain to me…
I would’ve expected this news to be a relief for folks who were disconcerted by the prior license, and it seems like that’s not the case. Many other open-source frameworks use the MIT license (Rails, Phoenix, Vue, Angular) and I haven’t seen similar consternation (though it’s possible I just haven’t run into it).
Is the continued skepticism because the MIT license still isn’t the best choice? Or because Facebook/React threw away trust with their original license, and MIT is open-ended enough that there isn’t reason to think Facebook’s motives have sufficiently changed? Something else?
What…? MIT is basically the same as BSD… so instead of remove the patent section they switch licenses?
They removed the patent grant and switched to MIT. They switched to MIT because the language used in the license implies a patent grant. See my other comment here.
Kudos to Facebook (and Wordpress)!
I don’t understand how this is a good thing; they are moving from a license that has a bad patent protection clause to a license that has no patent protection clause.
this comment on HN explains it
This is incorrect; the GPL has an explicit patent grant.
Lumping Facebook’s random one-off “let’s mash a weak unilateral explicit patent grant onto the BSD license” together with the carefully-designed Apache and GPL licenses is really weird. There’s a (very shaky) argument to be made that their one-off unilateral grant is worse than an implicit grant, but the idea that an explicit bilateral grant written by people who actually care about user freedom is the same thing is just … completely wrong.
I suspect people are confusing GPL with GPLv2. Inexcusable, given that GPLv3 is more than 10 years old now.
Note: GPLv2 has no explicit patent grant, but GPLv2 does mention patents. It has a clause which makes patent-encumbered GPLv2 software undistributable.
yeah, I see this as a generally good thing
I am not a React developer but I think it’s a good thing because it’s the same license Angular and Vue use. There is no mention of patents in the MIT license but now going forward any problems you have concerning patents are the same problems you’d have if you chose angular or vue in the first place.
I agree. I expected them to move to the Apache license.
Apache foundation and Baidu also dropped React for the same reason recently.
So now they’re in the same situation as GraphQL, which companies are abandoning due to patent fears?
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Is the new license text available anywhere? This announcement feels like they have written another custom license and we will be back in the same place in the next six to twelve months.
Are we reading the same announcement?