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Startups should not use React

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Re: Startups should not use React

#111

Post by tchaffee »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #69

FUD, FUD, FUD. Pure FUD. There are, AFAIK, no known patents on React. This means you can go ahead and sue Facebook for patent violations to your heart's content. The license they granted to you to use any of their patents applied to React (of which there are none) is terminated, and you can merrily continue using React. If this is incorrect, and Facebook actually do hold patents on React, then all of the popular alte…

> AFAIK

Should I tell that to my investors? That AFA matthewmacleod on HN knows, we are good?

> then all of the popular alternatives almost certainly infringe on them as well.

But the lawsuit would be against those alternatives directly and not my company? I'm not sure about this, but I'm not also sure why we should be taking advice about this issue from non-experts.

Re: Startups should not use React

#112

Post by thepompano »

pluma wrote: post #109

Aside from the validity of the article's claims about patents (see my other tirades about that) I'm not sure the point even makes sense. React, the library, is at its core a glorified templating system. It provides plenty of escape hatches that make migration as well as inclusion of foreign UI components and libraries a breeze. It's stupidly simple to migrate away from. If you are a high valuation startup looking to…

Just throwing this out there - replacing an entire front-end monolith framework in large part depends on the size/scale of the application, and how well it was implemented to begin with.

Re: Startups should not use React

#113

Post by golergka »

alvivi wrote: post #92
pluma wrote: post #87

Nerds shouldn't write opinion pieces about subject domains they don't understand. Seriously, stop this. Sometimes you just need to admit you have no idea what you're talking about and shut up. The author honestly thinks using Preact or Inferno could protect them from patent lawsuits. Oh, wait, maybe "Facebook holds any software patents on the Virtual DOM or the React APIs" so better use Vue and Cycle. Unless you actu…

> Nerds shouldn't write opinion pieces about subject domains they don't understand. Following your words, you should not be even allowed to comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority Seriously, stop this.

Argument "I know X" is different than "I don't know X and neither do you".

Re: Startups should not use React

#114

Post by codingdave »

Even if everything in this article were 100% correct, which is clearly arguable, think about how this would truly play out. Company X would sue Facebook. Facebook would sue them back for using React... and then... lawsuits would ensue. Attorneys would do their things. Cases would be argued out of court. Lots of legal stuff would be going on, and plenty of time would be had for the engineers to select and move to a new framework.

Yes, I think there are problems with the license, and I'm not using React. But do I really think those problems will result in some scenario where you have an overnight show-stopper of your business because of it? Extremely unlikely.

Startups need to stop fearing the law and start understanding it.

Re: Startups should not use React

#115

Post by scandox »

pluma wrote: post #91
scandox wrote: post #86

Trust. Trust. Trust and Trust again. My brain becomes exhausted within seconds of reading a licence. Not just because I'm lazy, but because I know that however closely I think I'm reading it, I probably won't be reading it closely enough to be 100% sure of my conclusions (viz. the differences of opinion here from people that actually have read this thing). So what do I do? I trust certain organisations and I don't tr…

Here's an idea: if you intend to lock people into a technology so you can sue them later, would you a) build a small library that encourages modular code, has tons of escape hatches to use other libraries and has so few concepts it actually encourages learning the language and solving problems outside the library instead? Or b) build a large monolith that comes with dozens of idiosyncratic concepts and its own way to…

Probably why I'm still using Backbone - and actively pondering other options!

Re: Startups should not use React

#116

Post by ktta »

ngsayjoe wrote: post #82
cbhl wrote: post #9

It's worth noting this "you can't sue us for violating your patents if you use our non-free open source software" is working as designed. Facebook claims that if every company adopted a React-like license, that software patents as we know it would basically die. It's worth noting that both Google and Facebook's patent lawyers are generally of the opinion that software patents are net bad, but differ in their opinions…

As a small startup, I absolutely love Facebook's React patent licensing. It gives me the advantage to use React (Native) while my bigger VC-funded competitors can't. It is like the opposite of economy of scale, haha. (PS: i have no plan to be acquired or raise a VC round or file any patent)

If you read the article again, you will notice the point about how large communities don't form with these licenses.

Open source software shouldn't have any restrictions on who can use them and who can't. While this license don't specifically exclude a class of people explicitly, even you agree that big companies can't use these projects. So these projects effectively exclude hundreds of thousands of software developers (who work in >small orgs) from using this project and therefore contribute to it. This greatly hurts the project itself, while projects no using this kind of license won't have a problem.

Re: Startups should not use React

#117

Post by franciscop »

The author is making assumptions about what Open Source is and what should or shouldn't be. While many developers would like Open Source to be about "creating communities to build better software together" (myself included), open source just means that everyone can read the code.

Different developers and companies might use Open Source for different reason, included but not limited to: reduce Q&A, brand relevance, increase hiring power, strategic positioning, ideals that code should be _libre_, etc. Some companies and devs might even want several of those!

In this line, Facebook is a private corporation who I think we all agree their main reason for releasing React.js or any code at all doesn't seem to be purely idealistic. I would say strategic position (the best tool in the dev world, notably against Angular) and increasing their hiring power are really high within their reasons to release Open Source.

It is patently absurd to tell companies what to do and patronizing to tell developers what to do. Also, something that I don't see anyone arguing for/against is why so many big companies, even ones competing with Facebook, can use React.js freely and without worries? It's a point that anyone arguing against React is conveniently ignoring but I'd love to hear about.

Re: Startups should not use React

#118

Post by blackoil »

Someone with knowledge should bring clarity to all this noise!

My understanding is, if I sue FB for some patents, they can sue me back with any patents they may hold on React. We do not know of any such patents they own. So practically I am no safer if I use preact/vue or even Angular, since they may own some patents that cover those tech.

tldr; Do not sue FB unless you have muscles.

Re: Startups should not use React

#119

Post by afro88 »

There were a lot of people in the older thread about the patents stuff saying things like "well, are you ever going to sue Facebook?? You don't need to worry about the patents stuff".

But consider this: Facebook do something disastrous, like leak a bunch of private or financial data and it affects you really badly. There's a class action against Facebook. Now you can't join it, because you don't wanna rewrite your app without React to ensure Facebook can't counter sue over a patent that may or may not exist on React.

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