[jameside]

This scenario's premise assumes Expo's success could heavily depend on claiming patent infringement against Facebook. If that were true then it'd probably be simpler not to use Facebook open source under the BSD+Patents license.

But for several reasons, the Expo team is working without the assumption we need the option of suing Facebook for patent infringement to be successful. I find companies that are sufficiently durable for other reasons to be more appealing to people whose livelihoods depend on the company in some way, including developers, the team, and investors.

[politician]

Agreed; Expo is in a unique situation that favors partnership with Facebook to maximize the penetration of the React license terms into the broader ecosystem. As such, Expo has natural resistance to the scenario above in that Facebook would not go after a promoter of its license strategy.

That said, Expo is sort of an outlier in this regard and other teams using React or other affected technologies in the process of building their businesses are unlikely to have the protection of such a natural alliance.

Beyond strategic alignment and intellectual property protections, it is hard to imagine what else might balance the scales between a global gigacorp and a $5M SV startup.