> This shift naturally raises questions about the rest of Facebook's open source projects. Many of our popular projects will keep the BSD + Patents license for now. We're evaluating those projects' licenses too, but each project is different and alternative licensing options will depend on a variety of factors.
The Open Source Initiative's definition of "open source" doesn't say anything about patents: https://opensource.org/osd
I don't know if Facebook has asked the OSI to validate their "before" license as "open source." Perhaps if they did it would be controversial (or perhaps not), perhaps it would lead to OSI making more restrictions on what it will call 'open source', I dunno.
One version of a "BSD+Patents" license is approved by OSI, but not one involving a "retaliation" clause. https://opensource.org/licenses/BSDplusPatent
Anyway, I don't think you have any grounds to say that license was not "truly open source".
The common thread here is that these libraries are often used together - changing React's license wouldn't have helped if they're also using Flow and Jest.
"and you may not initiate litigation (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that any patent claim is infringed by making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the Program or any portion of it"
The whole fight here is about patents, not about open source. Perhaps Facebook's solution to nuking patents was too crude, but it had nothing to do with "open source" vs "closed source". The whole issue here is whether you could still use your patents against Facebook, something orthogonal, if not outright hostile to open source.
In what way does re-licensing their most popular packages make it worse? It says they're evaluating. Doesn't say no and as demonstrated here it doesn't mean they wont change their mind later.
