Re: About Facebook updated open source patent grant

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On Tue, Jul 26, 2016 at 01:46:29AM +0000, Pamela Chestek wrote:
> On the basis that it is a breach of the further restrictions of Section 6
> of the GPLv2?

Well properly speaking GPL incompatibility should be grounded in the
'no further restrictions' clause. "Orthodox GPL (in)compatibility" is
actually a sort of semi-private semi-joke that goes back to
discussions I had in 2007 with Bradley Kuhn. But actually it might not
really apply in this case. I'm not sure because "orthodox"
compatibility theory was never really well defined.

The reason to treat the Facebook license (including patent terms) as
GPL-incompatible is for consistency with the 'precedent' of the Apache
License 2.0 being regarded as GPLv2-incompatible by the FSF where the
patent termination clause by itself was assumed (and largely continues
to be assumed) to be a basis for GPL-incompatibility. It is possible
to conclude that the Apache License 2.0 is GPLv2-incompatible without
addressing patent termination, however, because the upstream
indemnification clause provides an independent (and I think fairly
reasonable) basis for the same conclusion. I happen to think that the
view that the patent termination clause of the Apache License 2.0 is a
"further restriction" wrt GPLv2 is either nonsensical or else can only
be understood on political-historical grounds.

The FSF view on the Apache License is IMO logically inconsistent with
other FSF precedent, as shown by the conclusions that CC0 and the
Clear BSD license (both of which assert that no patent license is
granted at all) are GPL compatible.


Richard


> 
> On Mon, Jul 25, 2016 at 8:51 PM Richard Fontana <rfontana@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Jul 24, 2016 at 12:58:40AM +0200, Haïkel wrote:
> > > It appears that since April, 2015, Facebook updated their open source
> > > patent grant.
> > >
> > https://code.facebook.com/posts/1639473982937255/updating-our-open-source-patent-grant/
> > >
> > > Some companies like Google decided to ban Facebook software from their
> > > toolbox since.
> > > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9271331
> > >
> > > The actual conditions added to all Facebook projects:
> > > https://github.com/facebook/osquery/blob/master/PATENTS
> > >
> > > Potentially, it could mean that no Facebook open source projects can
> > > be shipped in Fedora including high-profile projects like
> > > React.Native.
> > >
> > > The worse being that such javascript library are often bundled without
> > > notice ...
> >
> > The Red Hat legal team looked at this quite recently. FWIW we don't
> > have an objection to code covered by these terms. I don't believe
> > there is a Fedora-based policy reason for objecting to these terms,
> > since even with the patent terms the license is a free software
> > license.
> >
> > (It may be noted that the combination of the BSD license and the
> > Facebook patent terms is GPL-incompatible at least under orthodox GPL
> > compatibility analysis.)
> >
> > Richard
> > _______________________________________________
> > legal mailing list
> > legal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/legal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
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