Comfort can hurt. Automattic is not comfortable with the Facebook license and you say it like it's a baseless FUD but even if they get a 1% chance of going to court against Facebook then they rather not take that risk of litigation anytime in the future. It's a business decision for the long term as rewriting doesn't cost that much for them.
Did we read the same article? Automattic is not worried about the license. Automattic is worried about how others perceive the license and how that will lead to WordPress being perceived. They see no risk in the license, they see risk in how they will be perceived for being associated with the license.
The license is ONLY a problem if you intend to initiate litigation against Facebook and can't swap out React (or a React-using product you rely on) with something else. Something tells me the number of companies that a) will ever be in a situation to sue Facebook over patents, b) rely on React or React-based products, c) don't already infringe upon any other Facebook patent without using React, AND d) would be severely harmed if sued over React patents, is exceedingly small.
Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple only fulfill conditions a and b (although React is non-vital to their businesses). Most startups only fulfill conditions b and d. In order to meet all four conditions, your company would have to be built entirely on React (or other FB open source technologies), be small enough not to be able to replace React, not infringe on any of the many other patents FB holds and yet somehow own patents FB infringes on and want to actively sue them.
Deciding against React because of the patent situation for most companies is the equivalent of worrying about someone stealing your second million before you have even made a single dollar.
No, that's not what the article says. It says the fears around the license are something they do not want to have to address within their ecosystem. Wordpress itself is comfortable with the license. There is no fear of going to court.
1. Possibility of Automattic attacking FB with patents = 0%. (No issues here with React)
2. Possibility of FB attacking Automattic with patents (No issues here; Patent grant doesn't get revoked for countersuing).
3. Wordpress end users getting attacked by FaceBook (Again no issues here, grant doesn't get revoked for countersuing).
4. Wordpress end users planning to use software patents against FB - The guys who actually have a problem.
So basically, the FUD helped individuals/trolls/companies who want to wield software patents as a weapon; to the detriment of the wider community which sees software patents as evil.
> So basically, the FUD helped individuals/trolls/companies who want to wield software patents as a weapon; to the detriment of the wider community
This is just beyond ridiculous to characterize the FB patents addition as some sort of social good needed in the battle against patent litigation, like they are doing everyone a favour. The patents addition in the license is there to protect FB's interests. Words that specifically benefit the interests of a megacorp do not belong in an open source license meant to be used by everyone and anyone. It sets a terrible precedent that can be used to justify a whole range of different companies adding their own clauses, each of which that can be plausibly argued for. And all of that requires other companies to conduct legal counsel, altering which companies would be adopting WordPress - imposing a kind of decision making process and barrier that few if any in WP would or should desire. And it's not even worth it considering there are equally attractive alternatives out there.
Sadly there's not. I like Vue, but it doesn't have the maturity or ecosystem of React. Plus React Native is a great addition to open source that Vue has yet to fully counter. There's also GraphQL, which is published by this license as well. Lots of great, revolutionary tech impacted by this license.
WordPress is looking for a way to create modern interfaces in a more streamlined way and are looking for a tool to make that easy. Any number of libraries and frameworks are perfectly viable or can be made viable, most of which are operating from the same set of ideas while delivering the same benefits.
The size of React's ecosystem, bus factor and the availability of React Native all are nice but overstated in their importance relative to alternatives and obscure the many other considerations the WP community weighs up.
Further more, React's ecosystem size conveys marginal benefits given that use of React in core would have been constrained (it's not like core devs would be tapping into many additional React-based tools for core work).
React Native has not proven itself to be as stellar and promotes lock-in. If we come to rely on additional FB-engineered architecture to such a degree WP bets its future on the decisions made by a corporate giant with goals very dissimilar to WP and with decisions that may change down the line. This idea that FB has somehow has the closest thing to the holy grail and so we must all jump aboard the FB train is a very foolish and shortsighted one in my view. WP was wise not to adopt it.
Wordpress itself depends on its ecosystem of plugins to make it so powerful. React is no different. There are 40,000 packages on NPM for React. That's something no other JS library comes close to save for JQuery. That does matter. I think Vue may very well get there some day. It's just not there yet. Maybe the WordPress support would be enough to take it mainstream.
