Interesting, I hadn’t heard about the React licensing yet. Thanks. > The 'Additional Grant' has attracted a fair amount of criticism (as > did an earlier version which apparently resulted in some revisions by > Facebook). There was a recent blog post by Robert Pierce of El Camino > Legal [3] (which among other things argues that the React patent > license is not open source). Luis Villa wrote an interesting response > [4].
Mr. Pierce’s first criticism point about the grant itself being unnecessary is spot on to me. One cannot "use the software” without implying a patent license; and the BSD-styles have such an incredibly well-established industry understanding that (to me) it’s ludicrous to consider it could be interpreted any other way. I would very much like to know what [profanity] company would try to pull such a stunt as plaintiff. The only utility of React’s PATENT file is the rather broad retaliation. > What do members of the license-discuss community think about the > licensing of React? I see a few issues here: Conflicted. > - does the breadth of the React patent termination criteria raise > OSD-conformance issues or otherwise indicate that React should not > be considered open source? At best, it could be argued as some form of implicit discrimination (#5) or revocation of right to redistribute (#1). Retaliating against an “any" plaintiff vs only a specific class of plaintiff (e.g., Apache 2.0), though, isn’t very compellingly different. Seems like a stretch to me. > - is it good practice, and does it affect the open source status of > software, to supplement OSI-approved licenses with separate patent > license grants or nonasserts? (This has been done by some other > companies without significant controversy.) This is also a direction that has been discussed and is being pushed by some of the White House (code.gov <http://code.gov/>) and other Gov't lawyers. In cases like “CC0 + patent grant”, it may make sense given CC0 explicitly says there’s no patent grant. (Yes, I know CC0 is not (yet) an OSI license. That should change.) In the case of the implicit permissives, though, I think it’s very bad practice. Creates unfounded FUD and license proliferation motivation, counterpart licenses explicitly with/without a patent grant. Cheers! Sean
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