Facebook Petitioned To Change License For ReactJS (github.com)

mpol writes: The Apache Software Foundation issued a notice last weekend indicating that it has added Facebook's BSD+Patents [ROCKSDB] license to its Category X list of disallowed licenses for Apache Project Management Committee members. This is the license that Facebook uses for most of its open source projects. The RocksDB software project from Facebook already changed its license to a dual Apache 2 and GPL 2. Users are now petitioning on GitHub to have Facebook change the license of React.JS as well.

React.JS is a well-known and often used JavaScript Framework for frontend development. It is licensed as BSD + Patents. If you use React.JS and agreed to its license, and you decide to sue Facebook for patent issues, you are no longer allowed to use React.JS or any Facebook software released under this license.

Comments

Re:Actual License: https://github.com/facebook/rea

[Antique Geekmeister]

> This is a ridiculous argument. The number of words in a document does not indicate how comprehensible that document is.

Or how safe. In many contracts, the devil is in the details. GPL has evolved to a longer license, and explicitly included patents in GPLv3, because various companies and individuals have tried to legally and illegally violate its stated goals. The more explicit license of GPL has helped protect us from monopoly control of media and of data, and is now helping protect developers and computer users from patent abuse.

Re:Actual License: https://github.com/facebook/rea

[hord]

GNU and the FSF have their own version of "Freedom" that is used as the philosophical basis for their licensing. It's a completely different mindset from the people that use MIT/BSD licensing.