It's fine that Facebook wants to defend itself and gain hiring benefits from launching interesting projects, but those reasons aren't sufficient to allay concerns that this license won't be weaponized against small teams with interesting technologies.
Those small teams only need to be concerned in the event that they intend on suing Facebook for PATENT INFRINGEMENT. That's it. That's the only event that this could ever be relevant to you. Small teams should focus on building great products. If their hope is to patent some software algorithm in the hopes that they're going to make it big in a legal battle with Facebook...I mean, I suppose in that special 1 in a million case you should probably avoid Facebook open source. But you are probably going to face patent counterclaims regardless, because they own thousands of software patents. You might be accidentally violating one of them now. Who knows? Have you combed through your code base and Facebook's patent portfolio to find out? What about all the other big software companies out there? Google? Yahoo? Microsoft? Your choice of tech won't prevent you from violating broad software patents like Amazon's infamous 1-Click patent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click, for example.
The odds are much lower than 1 in a million. It’s any kind of patent. Facebook aren’t just a social media software company anymore by any means.
What this means is they can infringe on your patent on say “tinder for dogs bark swipe mechanism” and they can infringe all day long knowing you would have to migrate off React Native and GraphQL before sueing them over it
I think your example just shows how ridiculous software patents are as a concept. Facebook's license is an attempt to prevent silly lawsuits over things like that.
I don't think you're thinking it through. Facebook is setting up a situation where it can do bargain barrel corp dev -- acquihires or (what reasonable folks would consider) theft of IP based on what technology was used to build the target's "About Us" page.
No, they're setting up a situation where if Yahoo sues them for some one-click patent they can be like, "well, you're using our virtual dom patent so let's call the whole thing off"
What do you think drives investment in small teams? Do you think it's fancy JavaScript and a hero banner? No, intellectual property is a significant factor for the types of teams I'm talking about.
These teams need robust protection from large organizations intent on acquiring or replicating their hard-earned results. Facebook's licenses undermine that protection for the shiny carrot of a flashy webpage. It's a bad deal.
