Ask HN: Is it safe to use Facebook's open source projects?
There is no way to be safe from patents. Anyone could have them, they don't have to declare them, and they're written in deliberately obtuse ways so that you have no way of finding relevant patents before you're sued for infringing them (you don't have to have copied, or even be aware of, any patented thing to violate a patent). It's just a hazard of the software industry.<p>The BSD license says nothing about patents, so this project is in some sense <i>safer</i> than a "normal" BSD-licensed project (but not an Apache, EPL or GPLv3-licensed project). The grant Facebook is giving you is fairly minimal but that's understandable from their perspective: they don't want to give you any extra patent rights, just enough to use the stuff they're actually trying to release.<p>It's not <i>safe</i> to use software in a commercial project. Facebook might hold patents on any random library you're using. Companies that aren't Facebook might hold patents on any random library or on React. You could develop a library in-house in a clean room and it could still infringe someone else's patent. Patents really suck that way. But React is in no more danger than any other code you might use.<p>EDIT: no more danger than any other BSD-licensed code. It would be safer to use code that has a less revocable patent grant, such as that in the Apache License, EPL, or GPLv3.