This is what makes me scared of React. Everyone says it's so simple but still you need all these specialized plugins for things that are easy to do without React.
React is a component based UI framework, so I find it natural that common components that might exist in some other framework need to be re-created for React.
IMO, the fact that React components can be easily shared with an interface that follows a common pattern is a major strength of React, rather than a weakness.
With Griddle, we were trying to mostly stick with React so it could be used without other libraries (we do currently have a dependency on underscore but we're hoping to remove that at some point in the future as well).
IMO, the fact that React components can be easily shared with an interface that follows a common pattern is a major strength of React, rather than a weakness.