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?
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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.