React license may be problematic

[pmonks]

Just came across this React issue, as well as associated discussions within Apache legal, and wanted to alert the om team.

Note that after a quick search, I was unable to determine whether there's a similar compatibility concern between the EPL and Facebook BSD+Patents licenses as exists between ASLv2 and Facebook BSD+Patents. If not, this should be closed as a non-issue.

[gstein]

Please note that the ASF chose this path for policy reasons, rather than "license incompatibility". We don't want downstream users of Apache code to be surprised by the PATENTS grant that (was) in RocksDB and (is) in React. Users should only need to follow the ALv2, with no further constraints.

These license can work together (IMO) and simply provide two sets of restrictions upon users.

[pmonks]

From the apache discussion:

Roy T. Fielding added a comment - 12/Jun/17 13:50

I have discussed that license with Facebook's legal counsel. It is not BSD (which relies on implied patent grants) and is intentionally incompatible with the Apache License.

(emphasis added)

While it may be that the ASF believes this is a policy decision only, the same doesn't appear to apply to Facebook legal.

EDIT: and yes, I realise this is reiterating the conversation in the React issue - in the spirit of the DRY Principle it may be better to continue it there.

[livtanong]

Looks like this has been fixed by Facebook!
https://code.facebook.com/posts/300798627056246/relicensing-react-jest-flow-and-immutable-js/