Hey there, how have you been?
The last days my news feeds were swarming with articles about Facebook’s blunder with their licensing open source projects like React, GraphQL, Immutable.js etc. Their licenses were a mix of BSD license and Facebook’s own words in order to prevent someone from suing them for patents and other legal stuff. But not anymore, because after all the commotion they backed down and re-licensed these great pieces of software with the MIT license, this time! I am not sure if they changed or will change the React Native license too. Let’s see! Here is the chronicle of this turf war:
- July 15: The Apache Foundation Bans React
- August 18: Facebook says the BSD+Patents license is to protect them from “meritless patent litigation”
- September 14: WordPress says it isn’t comfortable with Facebook’s BSD+Patents license
- September 22: Facebook announces it’s ditching the BSD+Patents license and switching to the MIT license
- September 24: WordPress says it’s OK with React now
- September 25: Facebook officially switches to the MIT license
For sure, when I first heard about this dispute was when WordPress decided to exclude React from future releases ever! They were trying to find alternatives such as Vue.js or Preact! Thank God Facebook changed its mind, relatively easy I would say.
By the way, I do not know if these facts are related but I read an article in Investopedia about Facebook’s share price falling! Is it probably an omen for an anticipated correction, who knows?
Conclusion
So, we continue using React and everyone’s happy! Let’s focus on the code, not the legal and moral parameters!
Cheers
