Re:Apache Foundation disallows use of the Facebook “BSD+Pate...
by khuey on Monday July 17, 2017 @09:06AM
(#14788098)
The patent grant is solely a grant from Facebook to the world, so Facebook can choose to grant more rights at any time. Just like I can sign a contract with you allowing you to borrow my bicycle on Thursdays and then later unilaterally decide that you can borrow it on Mondays as well.
The University of California did something like this in 1999 when they cancelled the advertising clause of the original BSD license. See ftp://ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/pub/4bsd/README.Impt.License.Change.
Please explain to me - are they able to change it again at any time in the future to "unclear" it again or just change wording altogether? Will it affect all users retroactively in that case? Because all this "they had bad wording in license but they changed it so we can use it now" sounds kinda crazy.