[JoshMnem]

I am not a lawyer, but MIT and BSD are thought to have implicit patent grants.[1] It would be completely absurd for a company to argue that they give the public the right to use their software, but "just kidding -- we were secretly withholding the rights to the patents all along so that we could sue you for using our software!" An apparent problem with Facebook's PATENTS file is that it explicitly withdraw the patent license if Facebook decides to infringe on your patents and you speak up about it.

I'm not sure if the author of that article is partially trolling in the attempt to get Facebook's patents terms applied to the entire spec.

The best solution would be to abolish software patents completely.

I think this entire PATENTS situation with Facebook is a good reason why people should prefer Free software that is created and managed by individual developers and independent foundations over "open source" software produced by large companies with legal teams and dubious agendas.

[1] http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Patent_clauses_in_software_licences...

[mbrock]

You could create just as much fear, uncertainty and doubt by pointing to the lack of clarity around the notion of an implicit patent grant.

[JoshMnem]

I don't think that they are the same. If the PATENTS file usage becomes widespread, it would probably impact small startups without legal teams more than anything regarding implicit patent grants would.

[ccleary00]

Good point. Wonder how much more frequently we're going to start seeing issues like this.