[thomyorkie]

> If all giants agreed to open source under the “BSD + patents” scheme, cross-adoption would grind to a halt. Why? If Google released Project X under “BSD + Patents”, and Amazon really liked it, rather than adopting it and losing their right to ever sue Google for patents, they would go off and build it on their own.

This seems like a reasonable argument, but it doesn't seem to have deterred several big name companies from using React. Airbnb, netflix, and dropbox for example.

[chaostheory]

Developers are not lawyers, and developers and lawyers don't talk to each other all the time. I wonder how many of those companies even bothered to check the license, given how fast they have to move? I've been guilty of that as well in the past.

[traek]

> I wonder how many of those companies even bothered to check the license, given how fast they have to move?

Airbnb, Netflix, and Dropbox? I guarantee you all of those companies have lawyers that reviewed the license.

[chaostheory]

Sure they have lawyers, but I highly doubt they reviewed it and I don't blame them since open source licenses have been pretty vanilla for over a decade now. The only companies that actually even really reviewed open source in terms of legal implications were extremely risk averse ones like the telecoms... in the 90s and early 2000s. Of course I could be wrong especially if any of those companies use a tool that checks licenses (I have my doubts).

[spraak]

Because it's a lot of work to go off and build your own.

[danmaz74]

Amazon is the poster child of idiotic software patents, see 1-click buying. If this makes their software development more expensive, I'll be really glad.