[Reply inline.] On Tue, July 25, 2017 06:42, Jesse wrote:
While I personally believe that patent aggression from Facebook would be suicidal for their open-source presence and gain them little, there is enough of a possibility to raise some concern.
As I tried to emphasise previously, the problem with Facebook BSD+Patents license is incompatibility with use in a program under free software licenses including it seems GPLv3. If the ReactJS license is incompatible with GPLv3, we need not analyse further. The Facebook BSD+Patents does protect from much possibility of Facebook patent aggression. Facebook need not do anything worse than issue software under such a license. If license incompatibility would not be a problem, the most likely hazard would be indirect as in the example case which I cited from Aaron Williamson which I tried to modify for something closer to a hypothetical situation affecting some possible organisation using Koha. [See the Minimising Patent Problems section in my previous message quoted further below.]
I keep my fingers crossed that Facebook will do the same for React as RocksDB, and dual-license under the APL.
A significant distinction which might lead Facebook to change the license away from Facebook BSD+Patents for RocksDB but not for ReactJS is that much of the code in RocksDB is from LevelDB written at Google. Yet, Facebook originally released ReactJS under Apache License version 2 which gives hope. Thomas Dukleth Agogme 109 E 9th Street, 3D New York, NY 10003 USA http://www.agogme.com +1 212-674-3783
I have no arguments against using Preact; it is MIT licensed and seems to be drop-in compatible with React (including JSX, if we decide to make use of that in the future) aside from a few small differences. We could start now with Preact and switch to React if the license situation is settled down the road.
2017-07-24 9:21 GMT-06:00 Thomas Dukleth <kohadevel@agogme.com>:
I take Kivilahti Olli-Antti's response as helpfully encouraging examination of alternatives to ReactJS. I also try to emphasise that the actual sufficiently disqualifying problems with the ReactJS license are with license incompatibility as opposed to some possibility of problems over some scenario with patents which might never become an issue for any Koha user or contributor.
[Remainder of reply inline.]
On Mon, July 24, 2017 10:25, Kivilahti Olli-Antti wrote:
[...]
LICENSE INCOMPATIBILITY.
I wouldn't be overtly alarmed by this license issue,
The problem is primarily that the current ReactJS license seems to be incompatible with GPLv3, the license which we use for Koha as a whole. All the code which we incorporate into Koha, such as any programming libraries incorporated into Koha, must be compatible with the overall license for Koha. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) have a helpful guide to various software license and their GPL compatibility of various licenses, https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html . FSF have not yet included the Facebook BSD+Patents license in their licenses page which is updated very infrequently and cannot include every variation on standard license terms. In the absence of specific comment from FSF or their lawyers which we could obtain if the issue seemed too unclear, we may take the issue as carefully treated after consideration over months as reported by people at the Apache Software Foundation in communication with Facebook legal counsel confirming intended incompatibility between the Facebook BSD+Patents license for patent terms in Apache License version 2 (ALv2) where there is some language in GPLv3 which seems to also be incompatible on the same point of revocation of the implied patent license in the 3 clause BSD license. I cited Roy T Fielding's comment in my original message, https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LEGAL-303?focusedCommentId=16046579 .
FREE SOFTWARE ALTERNATIVES.
however if there is a more free alternative we should use it.
Some have questioned whether the Facebook BSD+Patents license could qualify as a recognised free software license at all as the breadth of the patent license termination terms seem to violate the minimal requirements for freedom and the patent terms of the Open Standards Requirements of the Open Source Initiative (OSI), https://opensource.org/osr . The Facebook BSD+Patents license has very different terms from the OSI BSD+Patents license, https://opensource.org/licenses/BSDplusPatent .
Some alternatives to ReactJS are under licenses for which there are no doubts about whether they are free software compatible with GPLv3.
I don't mind having inconveniences due to using more free software.
Struggle for our privacy, freedom of speech, and environment is inconvenient, but well worth the investment, however costly.
The important framework improvements are "one-way data flow" and the underlying "state machine" (Redux-compatibility). Maybe server-side rendering. Looks like atleast InfernoJS proclaims support for those.
MINIMISING PATENT PROBLEMS.
There would be different issues to consider if the ReactJS license had some problematic patent terms but somehow not so problematic as to be incompatible with GPLv3.
Another take on the issue: https://medium.com/@dwalsh.sdlr/react-facebook-and-the- revokable-patent-license-why-its-a-paper-25c40c50b562
Dennis Walsh ignores the license incompatibility issue of Facebook BSD+Patents license in relation to ALv2 and also seems to similarly affect GPLv3 and GPLv2. He assumes that the primary hazard over patents from a Facebook BSD+Patents license is from Facebook directly. He assumes that no Facebook patents exist which read on ReactJS where he did not find them easily enough and no one has reported them to him. He does not treat the breadth of conditions for patent termination unrelated to any particular software under the Facebook BSD+Patents license which obviates assumptions about costs of replacing software relative to the costs of litigation. He dismisses any alternative scenarios citing one particular unlikely case, however, the most likely scenarios are indirect from the breadth of termination conditions and outside the scope of anything which he has considered. Any scenario for which there is an actual problem may be unlikely, however, if you or your organisation are in the midst of such a scenario the likelihood of its occurrence is moot for you or your organisation.
Problems in patent disputes are often indirect as in the scenario described by Aaron Williamson which I had originally cited, https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/10191#issuecomment-316380810 . Starting from Aaron's example I could imagine some scenario which corresponds to what I am informed is the usual type of problem which is faced over patents, however, my alteration of Aaron's example may suffer in some detail from not being a lawyer. A university with a state mandate in law to pursue patents arising from government funded research could be be substituted for Cisco in Aaron's example. An issue covered by a traditional patent, not one reading on software, could be the issue pursued against a Facebook subsidiary. After terminating all patent licenses granted to the university under the Facebook BSD+Patents license, Facebook might not pursue a patent action over ReactJS use by the university especially where the use prior to termination would have been licensed. Yet, the university's loss of any Facebook patent license to assert in defence may be the opportunity for a patent troll (holding patents without any product using them) to threaten the university over some patent reading on ReactJS. The patent troll would know that the university would be likely to agree to pay protection money to license the patent held by the troll to avoid the cost of litigation especially without a Facebook patent license for the university to assert in defence. The troll would also not have to risk any possible Facebook patents being asserted by the university to invalidate any claims in the patent which the troll would be asserting. The goal of the patent troll is to obtain protection money without much risk of actually having to face the financial costs or other hazards of litigation.
Even if GPLv3 license compatibility would not be a problem and even if almost all Koha users would never have even a traditional patent nor a mandate to pursue patents, we should not create potential burdens upon organisations which may be candidates for using Koha beyond the relatively simple obligations respecting free software. Certainly, we should not create a burden which Aaron Williamson describes as "compliance requires a burdensome -- maybe impossible -- degree of diligence."
Thomas Dukleth Agogme 109 E 9th Street, 3D New York, NY 10003 USA http://www.agogme.com +1 212-674-3783
_______________________________________________ Koha-devel mailing list Koha-devel@lists.koha-community.org http://lists.koha-community.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel website : http://www.koha-community.org/ git : http://git.koha-community.org/ bugs : http://bugs.koha-community.org/
-- Jesse Weaver