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Comment by chc | Hacker News Reader

It's not accurate. Facebook offers a blanket patent license with React, and the patent license (not the software license — just the patent one) terminates if you sue Facebook for patent infringement. And of course, if you sue them for any other reason, nothing happens at all. And even if the patent license is terminated, AFAIK React isn't known to be patent-encumbered.

Acting like this is some landmine that allows Facebook to just put anyone they dislike out of business is ridiculous. Other JavaScript frameworks like Angular and Ember don't even include patent clauses, so even if Facebook revokes the patent grant, that leaves you in the same position that you're in by default with Angular. The license even specifically allows you to counter-sue Facebook if they already have a lawsuit against you.

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I think the cause of the complaint is that if they wanted these things in a license, they could've used Apache 2 and been done with it.

Any confusion that arises from deciding to depart from well-understood licenses is fairly laid at their door, in my view.

Apache 2 is somewhat less permissive than Facebook's choice of BSD + patent grant. I agree that people probably wouldn't have been able to spread the FUD so successfully if they'd gone for a more conventional setup, but the licenses are short (probably shorter than Apache combined) and pretty clear. It feels pretty unfair to say "Facebook's open source dev team deserve to have their names run down because they chose more permissive license terms than we're used to."

> Acting like this is some landmine that allows Facebook to just put anyone they dislike out of business is ridiculous.

That's true; however,

> React isn't known to be patent-encumbered.

That's a useless assertion. Many patents only become known once the lawsuits start. Facebook has amassed a patent portfolio, and patents are a legal instrument that can only be used offensively.

Sure, but none of that makes it a useless assertion. I'm not saying React is a magic shield from lawsuits — I'm saying that React doesn't appear to be any more dangerous in this regard than the majority of open-source software. You could validly express the same concerns about nearly anything.

Remember, the claim I was disputing was that "only a fool will use reactjs" because the patent license is conditional. All I'm saying is that I don't see any reason to be more concerned about React than, say, Angular.

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