some questions from the fan fan forum
what’s your opinion on the whole react
license thing holy Shh all right a fair
warning here this is gonna be probably a
little bit R and T and a little bit
disorganized because I’ve tried to make
a proper episode script about this and I
fail every time because if things just
blew but I’m going to give you like to
my best of my ability is an overview of
what happened so let’s first talk about
what software patents are and how they
work
software patents is imagine that you are
a start-up right
you create a tech product and it over
the years it starts becoming successful
and you start getting revenue and as you
as soon as you do are people start suing
you you get all these kind of frivolous
lawsuits for patents that you haven’t
even heard of that you didn’t know that
you violated and they want money from
you and you look at these patterns and
you’re like this patent will probably
not hold up in court but there is a
small chance that it will and if it does
they they will get a kajillion kabillion
dollars from us and our company will go
bankrupt and even if it doesn’t hold up
the lawsuit will be very very costly so
it it will just it will just drain us
and distract us and it’s just easier to
just settle with this with this patent
troll and tell them like ok we gave you
this much smaller amount of money and
you will be I we are we just basically
agreed to by usage of your patterns and
that is how these patent trolls operate
it’s basically some kind of weird
extortion thing going on it’s it’s
absolutely dreadful and as your company
grows you start getting patents of your
own to defend against this you have like
a huge pile of patterns try to penalize
much as possible so that patent trolls
can’t patent these things and also so
that your competitors can’t who have
been doing the exact same thing can use
those patents against you and if they do
you just if someone sees you like
harassing you with their patents I like
saying that go you violate the to our
patents then you just look through your
huge pile of patents and you find three
Pakistan by like their thing and
you saying that you are violating three
of our patterns and then you just
perhaps they back off or you back off
and and or you settle some money but
it’s basically it’s this weird
stockpiling of legal warheads basically
software patents and patents is what
this whole shebang was about I’m gonna
talk about three types of software
licenses here we’re going to talk about
the MIT license which react uses now and
which is also very common software
license open source license I mean and
we’re going to talk about the license
that react used to use which is the BSD
license plus a patent grant and we’re
gonna talk about the Apache $2 license
because Apaches though started this
whole drama those we’re gonna talk about
those three and what happened a few
months back I think was that react no
sorry Apache has this blacklist of
licenses that they have that they where
they say that these if you have an
Apache project licensed under the Apache
2.0 license you cannot pull pull in
other libraries into these libraries
because they are incompatible with our
license they just don’t work and
if a license is on this blackness that
doesn’t mean that that license is evil
it just means that it’s incompatible for
instance that the GPL GPL to license
that we’re WordPress uses is on this
blacklist because of complicated reasons
and but it’s not compatible with the
Apache tutor old license and what apache
did was a day put the react license they
all react license the the bsd plus
patents license on this on this
blacklist and that did this because the
apache toodaloo license has a has an
explicit patent grants they they give
away their patents and patents that the
apache license Apache foundation has or
who whomever is using the apache license
to give away their their software they
say that you are allowed to use our
patents related to this product what the
apache license also has a revocation
clause which says that if you have you
have patents and you sue us for the this
product race and let’s say that we are
licensing a database let’s say that you
are suing us for like because we violate
some some of your patents in our
database then the patents that we have
given you regarding this database or
automatically rescinded because of the
lawsuit because we are going to need
those patents to defend ourselves from
you we have basically saying that we
have weapons we will not use them
against you on the condition that you
don’t use your weapons against us so
they haven’t the apache license has an
explicit patent grant included in itself
and it’s conditional on you not using
your patents against them on their space
cific the specific thing being licensed
now react had this license they had the
bsd license which is almost exactly the
same as the MIT license they are for the
purposes of this discussion we can call
them exactly the same RIA but what they
also included was an explicit patent
grant the beam what I mean by explicit
is that the MIT and the BSD license
which are again pretty much the same
have an implicit patent run because they
sort of imply that you’re getting the
patents the way they are worded they say
that hey you’re giving rights to this
software you can use it maja and you are
yeah that kind of implies that those
patents are included and this has been
tried in court
so this for most cases not all there are
like accept is especially the sublicense
thing if you like include software like
let’s say that you include some in my
MIT license thing inside of your
software which is Apache licensed that
is called sub licensing and the MIT
license allows that I think that the BSD
license allows it to I’m pretty sure and
in that case the patent transference has
not been been been tried like it’s just
that is why that’s part of the reason
why people some licenses also include an
explicit patent grant because they you
want to make that case clear as well but
I digress the point being is that react
shows not to rely on the implicit patent
grant of the BSD but they included an
explicit patent grant again again this
is not not uncommon this is this is fine
but they
and also just like the apache license
does a revocation clause like like you
get the these patterns but weird some
strings attached and it was not quite
the same as the apache license because
the apache license says that okay we are
licensing this database to you if you
sue us with patents of yours regarding
this database we we withdraw your
patents that’s what the Apache Apache
License says now the react patent grant
is a little bit different it said that
we give you our patents related to react
however if you sue us with your software
patents not sue in general but sue with
software patents any of your software
patents then you will lose the right to
our patents so basically they’re saying
you get some of our patterns but if you
sue us with any of your patents you you
like we would withdraw them because and
we will probably use them to counter see
you know the completely unreasonable
thing but in in my opinion but it’s it’s
not as generous as the Apache License
which will like only withdraw the
patents if you are suing on things
directly related to the to the database
that is being licensed word of a product
like let’s say like if I sue Apache for
something completely unrelated to rocks
to the database that they are licensed
and they have licensed me they will
still not they will not withdraw that
and those licenses but Facebook they
would and Facebook’s idea that like
Facebook is facing like a lot of
lawsuits they they face these things not
probably not daily but at least weekly
and they’re spending a lot of money
fighting software
in lawsuits and they’re probably not a
huge fan of the whole patent thing so
their idea with the with the patent
grant was to basically create this
lock-in effect between everybody that
you said and just prevent a lot of
lawsuits because then everybody will
would be using everybody everybody’s
patents and everybody would be like less
likely to sue everyone and primarily I
guess Facebook because everybody used
react and Facebook then then they would
create a bit of inertia to suing suing
Facebook or whomever is using the patent
in this this patent grant style of
giving away their patents oh but the
whole thing what’s like they I say I
personally think that they this is
perfectly reasonable from Facebook
standpoint and it’s absolutely not a
dangerous license that is just hugely
alarmist and especially to be honest
like what WordPress did and said that
all we’re not gonna use react because of
this license like ah that’s not a
responsible thing to do especially when
you’re not yourself that you they are
using a pretty dangerous license like
the GPL 2 is not a license that you want
in your like that’s a license that is a
bit dangerous if you’re looking through
your licenses in there like an
acquisition or something like that it’s
a kind of then you want like the MIT
license or the even better the apache
license is very nice but mjpl forces you
to like disclose the source of
everything that you that you that you
license away and that can create very
complicated things we might be sued by
the Free Software Foundation because
you’re not providing the source of your
commercial product to the people it’s
hmm yes I would think that word
would have been a bit more chill with
this
it was hmm I don’t know that aside I
think that Facebook could have done a
better job communicating around this why
they did it like when they did it they
should have been very clear and they
would should have been they it given the
sensitive nature and that people don’t
understand patterns I certainly did not
understand any of this before I I
started reading about it I think that
they could have done a lot better job
around communicating this and I think
that they realized that themselves they
realize like yeah we have not managed to
pull this this off people don’t like
this people yes patterns and they just
decided to drop the entire thing and
just license the thing under the the MIT
license and it was clear from the like
if if I’m looking at how the Facebook
team and Dan Abramov which is a super
nice guy conduct themselves online it’s
it’s clear that they they were just
super distracted by this entire thing
and they just want to get get back to
work and they’re happy like okay we
didn’t convince people about this
license now we think still think is
better but we we just going to drop it
and use whatever we think that the
community would approve of and and go
with that
and they are now on the MIT license and
everybody is pretty happy I guess you
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I am mpj until next Monday morning stay curious