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Comment by bcarroll22 | Hacker News Reader

Serious question. React has been around for a while. Companies like Airbnb and Wix, for example, have been using React for a while. If Facebook were going to leverage this the way people are scared of, wouldn’t there be some example of them using it the way people are scared of? You know, on a company doing something it’s proven that they could make major money on? It’s not like this is a new provision, it’s been around for a while, and they’ve not used it to backhand a single company that I’ve come across (please, correct me if I’m wrong on this). So can’t this be boiled down to a conspiracy theory? There are massively successful, profitable companies who they haven’t tried to leverage these provisions on, so I’m honestly trying to figure out, what’s the basis for this fear?

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Companies change. People change. You don't want it written into the license like that and depend on good will. If good will were enough we wouldn't have laws or government.

I don’t know if this really answers my question. You have to assume Airbnb, for example, has a legal presence that is very involved in tech decisions and how they might hurt the business. What I imagine was a very thorough scrutinization process came back with a green light to use it. Most of the startups worried about this don’t have the luxury of anything near that level of legal scrutiny, but can’t a startup that can’t afford it extract some value from a company like Airbnb using it without worries?

It's possible that Airbnb has their own, separate license with Facebook. It's also possible that they decided they could absorb the cost of a countersuit if they ever sue Facebook over a patent. I don't think speculating about Airbnb's situation gives any assurances to an entirely unrelated company.

I’d agree if Airbnb were the only large company using React, but they’re not. They were just the company I chose to mention. There’s also Twitter who just went all in building Twitter lite, Wix who is huge in the native navigation world, and plenty more. So would you guess that Facebook is negotiating a separate license with all of them? And besides, wouldn’t that nullify concerns even more because that means they’re willing to negotiate a more lenient license with any company that makes enough money to make them worth knocking off?

I’m not trying to be sarcastic, I just really don’t understand how these fears are justified. Besides, if Facebook decides they want to crush you and use React as a shield, you’ll probably have bigger problems in that moment than your choice of front end libraries. A bigger problem, I would think, is that you have something worth Facebook thinks is worth stealing. Facebook doesn’t need a React patent clause to smother a company.

Those were also just a few examples. Companies negotiate reciprocal agreements for baskets of patents all the time. Who knows what's in the basket? My point was that they have circumstances that don't apply to any other company, and there's no way to know what they are. Either the license itself, as written, works for you or it doesn't.

I see what you’re saying and I agree. But to continue down this path one last time, I still think what you’re saying meshes with my original point. If you’re big enough for Facebook to care to leverage this against you, you’ll have a legal team who can negotiate one of these nice reciprocal agreements. Until you reach that point, Zuck or his theoretical sinister successor probably won’t know, or care, that your company exists. Can we at least agree on that?

I can agree with the tautology that if a company is too insignificant for Facebook to care, then they're safe. But it doesn't take a large company to be a thorn in Facebook's side.

Imagine a tiny company finally figures out UX and solves some of the problems with spam, load balancing, etc. on a decentralized social network. If the cat gets out of the bag, they're an existential threat to Facebook.

    > If Facebook were going to leverage
    > this the way people are scared of,
    > wouldn’t there be some example of
    > them using it the way people are
    > scared of?

Sadly no, it's a real issue, because we can't predict the future. Zuck dies, is replaced by someone with a more billg frame of mind, chaos ensues. That's something we don't have any control over, so it is a valid question. The current global political situation shows the dangers of relying on political norms to protect you, rather than law.

> So can’t this be boiled down to a conspiracy theory?

The license is real, anybody can read it, when you can guarantee or demonstrate that Facebook will never act on in, not today, not in 10 years, under any circumstances then you can call it a conspiracy theory.

Where is the GraphQL license? I don't see it in the repository:

https://github.com/facebook/graphql/

So React is damned for including a PATENTS license and GraphQL is damned for not including a PATENTS license? Facebook can't win for losing. Geez, wish they would just re-license under Apache 2.0.

> So React is damned for including a PATENTS license

A patent grant is a good thing, you want a patent grant as a user of OSS.

The problem people have with React's patent grant is the one sided terms of the patent grant (and the fear that Facebook could hold you hostage with those terms).

> Geez, wish they would just re-license under Apache 2.0.

This would be my preference.

IMO, for the React issue, even if the issue is a paper tiger (https://medium.com/@dwalsh.sdlr/react-facebook-and-the-revok...), this puts a massive hit on Facebook's OSS credibility. Even if the fear was irrational, many people are never going to understand that now and many people won't touch any Facebook OSS because of that fear.

Facebook would probably solve a lot of that credibility loss by just re-licensing under Apache 2.0.

Unfortunately that logic seems to lead to a strategy of FUD in the direction of a different patent license, which if that approach is validated then leads to being less open doesn't it?

I don't get what you are saying entirely, but companies like Microsoft and Broadcom, of all places, have given patent licenses with their open source work that were not as one-sided as Facebook's was.

If Microsoft and Broadcom are better OSS+patents citizens then you are, you have a serious problem.

Unlike Microsoft, Facebook hasn't gone around demanding royalties: https://www.infoworld.com/article/3042699/open-source-tools/...

Microsoft hasn't demanded royalties for things covered under their patent license (duh).

That article is just another reminder why one cannot afford to give Facebook a pass on this.

Facebook owns thousands of patents and thus far, has not been aggressive with them. They have only been used defensively.

It's a real threat, just blown way out of proportion. The second Facebook leverages this patent clause on ANY company, React is dead and everyone will migrate to Preact / VueJS, etc.

This means that the React patent card is a one-time play with HUGE repercussions. Facebook isn't going to target your little company or startup and worrying about it IMO is foolish.

legal just told me it's ok for us to go ahead with react, some guy named watty on HN just set the lawyers straight

I think this is exactly what I am saying. There are companies using React that are much larger than anyone who is worried about this, and they don’t seem phased by it. That has to mean something.

These large companies could afford to move off of React if they had to. Smaller companies could be severely impacted by having to move a core product off of React quickly. I don't know why people are using Google as an example of it being safe to use for a 10 person company.

Okay sure, they could “afford” it, but that doesn’t mean they would want to. And if there’s even a feeling on the legal team that some day it might be an issue, why not just use what you’d someday have to switch to and start investing in that ecosystem instead? That would be making a business decision that you know could be flushing years worth of work and investment down the toilet just because.

Besides, isn’t the wording in this clause immediate loss of use? You’d either have to take the time to convert your app to something else before you sue them, which would still take a long time and give them the time to build/perfect your new lethal competitor, or sue them and shut your business down until you converted it to something, which is equally lethal.

It means their lawyers and FB lawyers have come to a backroom agreement.

It isn't just React. The PATENTS file is in most of Facebook's repos and it's becoming part of dependencies of dependencies. In the future it could be difficult to remove that software from your stack. (Immutable, Jest, Flow, Hack, etc.)

Let's imagine that due to a chain of events Oracle acquires controlling interest in FB :)

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