[dsacco]

Sorry, I'm confused, can you help me understand that blog post? I'm getting three messages from it:

1. We like React a lot with or without the license.

2. It's not our job to convince the world React's patent license is fine.

3. We're substantially moving away from React, including large rewrites.

...why are they moving away from React? I'm confused, do they believe using React implicitly supports it? They're already vocally supporting it.

I don't have an opinion or a dog in the race with regards to the React and patent license drama, but I legitimately don't understand why this blog post (or the underlying decisions) was written. In my opinion it feels like a huge deal to decide to rewrite a piece of production software, especially if you like the software already. So what am I missing?

Are they concerned that people won't use WordPress because it has React components? Does React's BSD + Patents license extend downstream like that?

EDIT: Thank you for downvoting me twice for asking an honest question folks...

[wwweston]

I think the key point in that blog post is this:

"Core WordPress updates go out to over a quarter of all websites, having them all inherit the patents clause isn’t something I’m comfortable with."

It's one thing to look at the license and guess that it's vanishingly unlikely you'll ever be in an intellectual property fight with FB (and it sounds like the counsel Automattic consulted with came to that conclusion for Automattic).

It's another thing to make that decision for everybody downstream using software that you distribute. Particularly when that's a reaaaally large number of people.

I'm on much less solid ground in speculating about more, but it's often interesting to watch the contents of speech when people are working to assure you of something:

"One nice thing about this apartment is that it's very secure." (That's interesting. Why is it important that this apartment is very secure? Is the neighborhood not so much secure?)

"This guy we're interviewing here is not being interviewed for your position." (That's interesting. Why do I need to know that, manager?)

In the case of this post, between the lines I potentially see something like:

"Hey FB, we don't feel threatened by the license, and you know, he who writes to code makes the rules, like Linus says. You're obviously doing what's right for you, from your point of view, and we're sure you know what's best for you, and if you're doing right by yourself, do you need to even ask if you're doing the right thing?

You do you, bro. And we're sure you won't be mad that we wanna let everybody else be themselves, too."

Not sure it's there, I could be reading more into it than I need to.

[debaserab2]

FTA:

> I think Facebook’s clause is actually clearer than many other approaches companies could take, and Facebook has been one of the better open source contributors out there. But we have a lot of problems to tackle, and convincing the world that Facebook’s patent clause is fine isn’t ours to take on. It’s their fight.

My interpretation is that due to the negative publicity that Facebook has garnered with their license, they didn't want to scare people away from using/building on top of their platform by using their library even though they themselves did not have a problem with the license.

It's understandable how that might be the final straw for Facebook when even people who don't have a problem with their license won't use their libraries for that reason.

[dsacco]

Thanks for that clarification. I interpreted that paragraph to be somewhat contradictory (“we like this but we’re moving away from it because it’s not our job to convince people it’s fine”). Your interpretation makes more sense and provides better color to it.

[rhizome]

Yes. The way I read it, Facebook essentially shirked the issue, regardless whether it's only a perception problem, onto companies like Wordpress. WP has their own users, it's not WP's job to do FB's work for them, and FB has to have known the patents clause was going to be problematic, or at least controversial.

[chrisco255]

React has been out for 4 years now. This hasn't been this big of a deal. But I guess at this point, React has hit critical mass, and it's sort of becoming a standard for front end development, so the FUD hit fever pitch.

[rhizome]

You seem to have other issues with the controversy, but remember that the impetus for discussion these days was the Apache Software Foundation not accepting BSD+P as compatible with its policies.

[CharlesMerriam2]

4. The license causes Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt for those considering our product. We (WordPress) do better by not causing this FUD for our customers.

[kuschku]

They feared that for example the Apache Foundation wouldn't use WordPress, and so with others.

And yes, the Patents part of that extends downstream to anything using it, that's the dangerous part of patents. It applies to everything that does that — even in independent implementations.

[dsacco]

Fascinating, I didn’t realize it could become an existential problem for them. Thanks!

[protomyth]

> Does React's BSD + Patents license extend downstream like that?

Yes, why would it not?