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Comment by jasonkostempski | Hacker News Reader

> be a win for free/open source software

Any project with such a license would be non-free, so I'm not sure how that would be a win for free software.

> such a license would be non-free

I'm inclined to say you're mistaken. The FSF hasn't published an analysis of the React terms, but if they did, it seems pretty much assured that they'd deem it a "free software license, but incompatible with the GPL".

Recall that Apache 2.0, MPL2, and GPLv3—all free software licenses—have patent termination clauses as well, but they're comparatively weak. In fact, GPLv2 didn't have one, and this was the reason why Apache 2.0 is labeled as free but incompatible with GPLv2. The FSF's solution to this was to include it's own patent termination in the next update to the GPL, which is why Apache 2.0 and GPLv3 are compatible today.

See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#apache2

>> such a license would be non-free

> I'm inclined to say you're mistaken. The FSF hasn't published an analysis of the React terms, but if they did, it seems pretty much assured that they'd deem it a "free software license, but incompatible with the GPL".

Richard Stallman said it is non-free [1]:

> React.js is nonfree because of its patent license restriction.

[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/directory-discuss/2017-01...

>Richard Stallman said it is non-free

Not the most impartial person to define "free" and "non-free".

Richard Stallman and the FSF are literally the Inês behind the original de definition of "free software". What are you trying to say there?

Anyway, even if you dont line Mr. Stallman, the set of licenses he deems as free software is pretty much 99.9% compatible with the set of licenses deemed "open source" by the OSI or licenses acceptable by Debian (the other authorities you might Sant to look to when it comes to this)

> Richard Stallman said it is non-free

And after actually reading it he said it's okay to use for GNU projects: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/directory-discuss/2017-01...

Thanks! I also found the following one which gives a rationale [1]. The fine distinction is that the patent grant is completely separate from the copyright license and the termination of patent grant has no influence on the copyright license whatsoever. Unfortunately these messages are not in a single thread, so it is a bit hard to find them.

[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/directory-discuss/2017-01...

For context in this discussion, the patent text in GPLv3 was original a copy of the Apache 2.0 patent text. This is why Apache 2.0 and GPLv3 are compatible, since the Apache 2.0 patent text is simply a subset of the GPLv3 patent text.

Shortly after posting this, I came across IanKelling's link [1] to the GNU post on Software Patents. I've definitely been conflating copyright and patents in my mind. Thanks for the clarification.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/software-patents.en.html

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