Your explanation really doesn't jibe with the explanation given in Facebook's post. If what you say is true, why do they make a point about this patent grant protecting them against patent trolls? There's something tricky about this that I can't figure out, but I really have a hard-time believing they're acting in good faith here.

As cited at multiple other places in this thread, Facebook's own FAQ on the licensing explicitly states what GP just did.

If we use the "minimalist" interpretation like you and others propose here, then I'm stumped by Facebook would bother. It's such a tiny, ultra-specific advantage for Facebook. Why throw this gas on the fire for such a minimal advantage? Just leave it alone.

I suspect this must be coming from Zuckerberg. He's pissed off that some patent troll, somewhere, was using Facebook open source, and he issued an edict. That's the only way this makes any sense at all.

A patent grant is a license.

The patent license is indeed independent of the copyright license, but it's troubling enough that multiple legal teams (Apache and Google, at least) don't want to entangle themselves with it.

I'm doubtful that any licensing scheme can significantly drive patent reform. Lobbying and legal precedents hold that capability.

> multiple legal teams (Apache and Google, at least) don't want to entangle themselves with it.

Citation needed on Google. Apache isn't "not wanting to be entangled", they reject EVERY license which gives stronger protections for user freedoms than apache license alone, like the gpl, lgpl, cddl, mpl, etc, etc, etc. Google has no problem using the gpl for linux and lots of licenses and projects that apache would reject, so you can't just lump them together like it's the same thing.

DannyBee is on this thread. That is good enough citation for me.

Fair enough. And my point about why Apache avoids stronger licenses actually applies to google too, but they are just more flexible about it on a case by case basis.

Just so I understand, as I've never really mulled on how software patents mix with open source licenses, when you say "you'd have a bsd license with no patent grant", who are you waiting to be sued by? Facebook and/or others? Could you theoretically release an open source project under something like BSD that infringes on a patent you hold and then sue someone for patent infringement that uses your project?

I suppose mainly what I'm asking is that by having this patents clause, is Facebook asserting that some or all contents of react are patented by Facebook? Would they be able to sue you for using react if you did something to get your patent grant revoked?