gstein67

it is Twilio, yup! ... and backed by a custom flask app, using yaml files to define/organize the menu structure.

And we save money by relying on GitHub's excellent tools, rather than wasting it, trying to recreate or stand up a similar platform. The communities wanted closer integration with GitHub (what they knew/used elsewhere), so we made it happen.

-- Greg Stein

That is simply not true. Please take your conspiracy theories elsewhere.

Apache maintains clones of all our GitHub org's repositories. GitHub has no leverage over our repositories. We have a fallback mechanism for contributors to push to our server, if they deny GitHub T&Cs.

Apache has the support of GitHub and Microsoft, from the CEOs of both, and through the organizations.

-- Greg Stein

Correct. We are pragmatic-focused. The communities asked for better integration with GitHub, so we provided it. (nothing to do with non/copyleft licensing regimes)

Mind you, we maintain private mirrors and have restrictions on some of the GitHub access/workflows (eg. ICLA on file, and 2FA required). We still need to track provenance, and must be able to operate independently, if it comes to that.

-- Greg Stein

The communities asked for GitHub integration.

It is definitely better-served. It was the communities asking for GitHub access/integration. So we provided it.

-- Greg Stein

Not to us here at Apache. We wanted the GitHub tools to be available to our projects. Why try and recreate all that on our own? Waste of resources. The ASF is for creating software for the public good; having a great version control tool website is not in that mission. We chose to leverage GitHub instead.

And yes, lots of our communities have been asking for better GitHub support (read: access to its tools). So we made it happen for them.

-- Greg Stein

Exactly. You'll be using the React code under the BSD license but without any patent grants.

Yes, it works just fine. Many projects at Apache rely on MIT-licensed code, and I know that several of the Apache projects are looking towards Preact as a replacement for their dependency upon React.

Of course you can sue them. It just comes with consequences.

Note that this only applies to projects from the Apache Software Foundation. Its policies do not affect outside projects, including those using the ALv2.

After August 31, no Apache projects can make a release that has a hard dependency/requirement on the FB/BSD+Patents license (same as for all other licenses described as Cat-X). Older releases will remain in the archives, but no new releases with such dependencies.

"everyone else but you" would no longer be an OSS license.

Correct. Once released under an OSS license, that cannot be revoked. They can change/restrict the license on future releases, but you can also choose an older release, which uses the more favorable OSS license.

Right. This is the notion that BSD provides an "implicit" patent grant. Legal scholars are debating it, and there is no court precedent. ... but it is likely a more permissive grant than the explicit grant provided by BSD+PATENTS.

The ASF does not want downstream users to be caught by more restrictions than those of the ALv2. The BSD+Patents licensing imposes more restrictions; thus, Apache projects cannot depend upon software under that license.

This is pretty clear, and the ASF has been operating under this "no more restrictive than the Apache license" since its origin.

There is a lot of confusion with regards to one point: the Apache Software Foundation did not make a request for a license change.

The Foundation does not presuppose to know how others should license their products. That is those others' choice. The Foundation does have policies on what licenses can be used, within the Foundation's projects. But that is for our projects, and not the same as pushing back against license holders.

So please. Stop with the meme of "Facebook rejected the Foundation's request". Not true. Facebook made a business choice, and the Apache Software Foundation will make its own choices.

The request came from one our projects' committers. Please do not confuse who speaks for whom.

The two copyright-based licenses are compatible, based on pretty much every legal opinion published.

Facebook is offering a separate patent license, and that is out-of-scope of the GPL.

With patents, it is usually best to not show your hand. Patent holders never publish the list of patents that read on their software.

Just say one, for discussion purposes. One is likely worth the (minimal?) loss of Goodwill/combinatorics/bundling with their licensing choice.

That is not entirely true. As stated elsewhere, there is likely an implicit patent license provided by the BSD. The reasoning is basically, "we are [copyright] licensing this cod e to you to use, so [therefore] we must also be providing a corresponding patent license to use the code."

Legal scholars are mixed on that, and it hasn't been tested in court.

But that implicit license is certainly better than the explicit license in FB's code.

To sum up: you may be worse off with BSD+Patents.