Why not Preact? It seems the react compatibility would be very helpful when they already have such a significant investment into react.
Then again, I think this whole patents issue is mostly FUD. The number of companies who have to reasonably consider suing Facebook for patent infringement is small and they know who they are.
If initiating a patent war with Facebook is a foreseeable business outcome for you, then you probably shouldn't use React. I remain convinced that logic applies to only a tiny minority of companies.
My reading of the license is that you lose Facebook patent grant even if your lawsuit was a response to Facebook's.
I am not a fan of (software) patents, but license restrictions are not limited to them either. So what is your recourse if Facebook decides to infringe yours?
Assuming this is true (IANAL), would you still feel as comfortable advising companies to use React?
I don't begrudge Facebook for their license for the same reasons that Matt stated, but I am highlighting this issue to my clients and would not recommend React's use because of it.
"Does termination of the additional patent grant in the Facebook BSD+Patents license cause the copyright license to also terminate?"
"No."
This might be the one[0].
"Additional Grant of Patent Rights Version 2 ... The license granted hereunder will terminate, automatically and without notice, if you (or any of your subsidiaries, corporate affiliates or agents) initiate directly or indirectly, or take a direct financial interest in, any Patent Assertion"
Seems clear to me that you lose the license to use React. The clause that terminates the license is contained in a grant of rights, but the license it refers to, is the license to which this grant of rights is an "addition".
Moreover:
"A "Patent Assertion" is any lawsuit or other action alleging direct, indirect, or contributory infringement or inducement to infringe any patent, including a cross-claim or counterclaim."
The "other action" is pretty broad and might as well include "use your patents in any way that goes against the interests of Facebook".
Reading legal documents with a benevolent attitude towards the claims, intentions and goals of the issuer is a pretty bad idea. If anyone decides they won't ever have or deal with patents and thus they are free of danger, that risk is up to them; but don't do it because you think the clauses only cover a narrow and unlikely set of situations.
There is nothing in that saying that they have patents on react, and if they have patent covering, it very likely covers very much more than just react (because of the generic way patents are filed).
«The license granted hereunder will terminate, automatically and without notice, if you (or any of your subsidiaries, corporate affiliates or agents) initiate directly or indirectly, or take a direct financial interest in, any Patent Assertion» see https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/master/PATENTS
The patent grant is separate from the copyright license.
If we assume that any patents covering React also cover the alternatives such as Preact, the nothing is gained by avoiding React.
Considering how arbitrary software patents often are, I would think it equally as likely that they hold patents covering aspects of Angular or Vue as React. I would also think it's equally as likely that Google holds patents covering aspects of React or GraphQL.
As far as I know, unlike GraphQL, nobody has found any patents filed by Facebook that would actually cover any part of React, so right now the patent grant seems to be more of a statement of intent. But expecting you can dodge patent lawsuits by using different technology is absurd. The only way to avoid software patent lawsuits is not to own, deploy or produce software. The only winning move is not to play.
Somebody on /r/ posted this[0].
I just read it. I can't believe this patent was granted. If I'm reading it correctly, it's a patent for an old trick used by every OS and video game ever made. Basically, don't redraw things that aren't in view, and only redraw the bits of things that are in view.
Anyway, I can't see how this is applicable to React, as it really isn't how the v-dom works at all. The v-dom isn't about failing to draw clipped items. The v-dom is about diffing two trees and only updating changed items.
Am I totally off base here?
Let's suppose that the set of Facebook's patents were known. The size of that set is large enough that if someone wanted to validate the claim that Facebook has no patents on React, it would be a massive undertaking—perhaps several man years, even. Not that this really makes a difference.
Facebook has thousands of patents with their name on them. They have thousands more where Facebook's name would not appear, because they control the patents through acquisitions and cross-licensing deals, which means the size of the set of Facebook's patents on any given technology is unknowable. We're basically running into the equivalent of the halting problem as applied to the world of IP—which has always been the crux case against software patents—it doesn't matter how diligent you are, because there's always the risk of being submarined.
So I don't know where this idea comes from that Facebook has no patents covering React. I keep seeing it repeated, and yet it seems to have been derived from nothing more than the same comments I saw early in the conversation about React probably not being covered—in which case, those comments are a terrible thing to base your understanding on, because I know those were just generic, off-the-cuff, probably underinformed speculation no different from 90% of the comments in any other thread about licensing.
Am I misunderstanding the flow?
1) Facebook has patents on some stuff React does. 2) (Assumption) Anything similar enough to be near-source-compatible probably runs a big risk of exposure to those same patents. 3) React is licensed in a way that you can use it without opening yourself up to patent litigation (it grants license to them). 4) Facebook infringes on some more-critical-to-your-business thing. 5) You sue. 6) Facebook sues you for using React (or Preact, from (2)?).
If you never use React you never get that patent license anyway, right? So be careful how distinct your replacement is. You'd need to analyze the claims of the patents you're worried about to see if they could still apply.
This guy seems to think the same ( https://medium.com/@dwalsh.sdlr/react-facebook-and-the-revok... ) but also doesn't feel like Facebook would ever use it, though that's not really relevant to the arguments made around the principal here.
The patents file does not take away any rights or impose any obligations.
You already have a license to use the React software, because it comes with a BSD license.
The patents file is an additional grant of rights. Specifically, the right to immunity against Facebook patents related to React, unless you have yourself initiated a patent lawsuit against Facebook.
The Apache License and the Mozilla Public License also contain patent retaliation clauses. Not many people care about this, and not many people even read licenses or think about what they mean, except in the case of React, because it's become a FUD meme.
Here's from the Apache License, v2, clause 3:
"Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted. If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed."
So if you sue over a patent, the Apache patent grant terminates.
Here's from the Mozilla Public License, v2, clause 5.2:
"If You initiate litigation against any entity by asserting a patent infringement claim (excluding declaratory judgment actions, counter-claims, and cross-claims) alleging that a Contributor Version directly or indirectly infringes any patent, then the rights granted to You by any and all Contributors for the Covered Software under Section 2.1 of this License shall terminate."
This is even stronger: if you sue over a patent, the entire license (not just the patent grant) is terminated, so that you would then be violating copyright law by distributing software based on that MPL project.
Nobody ever mentions that patent retaliation clauses are fairly common in open source, and nobody definitely goes into any detail about what they mean and how they differ.
This issue is a textbook case of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt).
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Implicit_patent_licence
It seems likely that judges would agree that free software licenses come with some sort of implied patent license, but it's unclear how that interacts with modification and redistribution, etc.
Yes, but only because the question "can X sue you for Y" is true for any X and Y. Licenses can't protect you from being sued; the only thing they can offer protection from is someone else winning a suit against you.