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Comment by ABCLAW | Hacker News Reader

Heather Meeker is a lawyer who represents Facebook. I have a background in this (although I am not your lawyer, so please do not take anything in this post as legal advice). The license is a serious issue for a subset of software companies and private developers.

Interestingly, most of the posters correctly identify the core concern. If you've invested significant resources into developing React projects, have IP, and Facebook infringes your IP, you're in very hot water.

Most businesses aren't competing with Facebook or patenting business critical innovations in spheres Facebook will be operating in. Using React in all of those cases is a non-issue.

For these people, the license's restrictions seem very minimal, so dumping React in the Open Source bucket seems reasonable.

For others, this restriction is an existential threat. This is why other people have an issue with the license being considered open source.

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"Heather Meeker is a lawyer who represents Facebook. "

As mentioned, Heather has represented a ridiculously long list of clients, including many strong competitors to Facebook.

If she says it's her personal opinion, you can take that to the bank.

In fact, given how many client she's represented, i'd say she's probably less biased than most folks. She's pretty much seen and dealt with it all.

I don't agree with your premise, that a variety of clients makes a representative inoculated against bias. If anything, it makes certain biases more pernicious as you examine the circumstances of your selected client roster while increasingly discounting other stakeholders.

I've seen this bias arise in senior practitioners with successful practices across industry groups.

In any event, her person is somewhat tangential to the important point: the react license is a substantial issue to a subset of people and organizations.

Could you explain to me how it's worse than if React were released without the patents grant like most OSS is?

It seems like you'd have no patents grant then anyway and you'd already in the position you're in now if you sue Facebook for patent infringement (and are using React).

Sure. There are a number of issues, but I'll highlight a trio to give you the flavor.

The first is with the OSS appellation, which should rely upon the permissiveness of the corpus of rights surrounding the work. React claims that it is OSS, but functionally the corpus is very restrictive.

The second is that the grant itself removes any question as to whether there's an implied patent license in a typical OSS license. This lowers FB's barriers to litigating against people using react using patents as well as copyright. The multiplication of rights afforded to IP holders is an issue best discussed elsewhere, though.

The third issue is that even if FB would never weaponize their React patent portfolio, prospective coders may avoid using the framework even if it is the best suited to task for fear of FB extending into their industry. This is not efficient for either party.

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