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Facebook Relents, Switches React, Flow, Immuable.js and Jest To MIT License (theregister.co.uk) 50

An anonymous reader quotes the Register: Faced with growing dissatisfaction about licensing requirements for some of its open-source projects, Facebook said it will move React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js under the MIT license next week. "We're relicensing these projects because React is the foundation of a broad ecosystem of open source software for the web, and we don't want to hold back forward progress for nontechnical reasons," said Facebook engineering director Adam Wolff in a blog post on Friday. Wolff said while Facebook continues to believe its BSD + Patents license has benefits, "we acknowledge that we failed to decisively convince this community"... Wolff said the updated licensing scheme will arrive next week with the launch of React 16, a rewrite of the library designed for more efficient operation at scale.
Facebook was facing strong criticism from the Apache Software Foundation and last week Wordpress.com had announced plans to move away from React.

"Wolff said Facebook considered a license change for its other open-source projects, but wasn't ready to commit to anything," the Register adds. "Some projects, he said, will keep the BSD + Patents license."
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Facebook Relents, Switches React, Flow, Immuable.js and Jest To MIT License

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  • by akahige ( 622549 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @11:55AM (#55250727)
    Top of the thread. [twitter.com]
  • by SysEngineer ( 4726931 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @12:10PM (#55250775)
    Writing JavaScript to support a HTML template is what web design should be like. Writing JavaScript with HTML sprinkled in not the way the HTML was designed. jQuery a way to deal with advance web pages before polyfil, React is just super jQuery. Angular is good but too restrictive and formal. Vue is the best so far. but still not there. I believe parent / child communication should be easier, messages and props create a clean interface but it is limited.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      HTML templates only work if the layout of your site is fairly static, or composed of parts which themselves are fairly static. For a highly dynamic interface (e.g. a single page web app with more in common with a desktop app), it simply makes more sense to invert the flow of logic.

      • by tepples ( 727027 )

        For a highly dynamic interface (e.g. a single page web app with more in common with a desktop app), it simply makes more sense to invert the flow of logic.

        A vocal minority claim that developers of Internet applications ought to be releasing a desktop application for each major operating system, with public API specifications to allow third parties to develop clients for minor operating systems, instead of a single-page web application.

        • You mean separating the "internal" gibletty stuff from the "external" pretty stuff? What next, splitting the "external" stuff into "inny things" and "outy things"? And then deciding that the last two are sort-of-nearly-almost the same and sticking them partially back together?

          You're absolutely barmy. No way could that catch on.

      • How non static do you want? Look at Tax N Vote [taxnvote.org] for a dynamic display. Most desktop app do not have 3D.
      • Mithril.js emphasizes leveraging JavaScript using the HyperScript API (instead of an adhoc templating language) and automatic redrawing when your application changes via user interaction or a network event. This makes web single-page application development quite pleasant to write and maintain and is scalable. You can also test much of such vdom-based UIs without creating real DOM nodes.
        https://mithril.js.org/ [js.org]

        Check out Tachyons and similar CSS libraries which use CSS classes to essentially define inline st

  • by jtara ( 133429 )

    I've leave this stuff to the FaceLemmings.

    One word: Parse.

    But this time is different.

    • You can still use Parse http://parseplatform.org/ [parseplatform.org]

      It's still mostly compatible with the version of the library that supported Backbone too. I basically just ignored the client side, migrated the server side, and moved on with my life. It was a pain, but not quite the technological showstopper people make it out to be. I really wish we'd use Parse as a good example of how to retired a project.

      • by jtara ( 133429 )

        Yes, you can still use Parse, - if you got stuck with it- since Facebook open-sourced it. And there are companies that will sell you Parse PAAS at excessive prices - because they have a captive audience who got stuck.

        I basically just ignored the client side

        Smart move! Spooky Database Action At A Distance. Not good.

  • by davide marney ( 231845 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @12:27PM (#55250831) Journal

    An extremely positive development for FB. I'm a little surprised they went all the way back to MIT. Even Apache has a claw-back provision, but its scope is limited to lawsuits over the product itself, not lawsuits against the entire company. Maybe they didn't feel they could limit the scope in practice, so they just opened it all up.

  • I will applaud any entity that moves their licensing to a less restrictive model, regardless of their past behavior. Licenses are a royal pain in the ass and often contain hidden gotchas. Any license(looking at you gpl) which offers clear boundaries is a joy to work with.
  • This will be Facebook's scripting language for highly addictive content.

  • ... for idiot lego brick style web "developers". The whole javascript ecosystem is joke house of cards - a bad initial paradigm, a badly designed language with half assed libraries thrown on top used by bottom of the barrel coders who wouldn't be able to code in C++, java or some other grown up language if their lives depended on it. Yet most of the web now relies on this bloody garbage. How the hell did we get here? I despair.

  • by JenovaSynthesis ( 528503 ) on Saturday September 23, 2017 @06:02PM (#55252077)

    I'm sure Facebook's change of heart has absolutely NOTHING to do with the fact that Matt Mullenweg announced on Thursday that WordPress was going to ditch React as a result of this BSD+Patents crap as he did not feel comfortable pushing that kind of a license onto about a third of all websites.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    we don't want to hold back forward progress for nontechnical reasons," said Facebook engineering director Adam Wolff

    Article I, section 8, states, "Congress shall have power... to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

    Finally, somebody recognizes that patents and copyright are intended to promote the progress of science and useful arts. Microsoft and Apple still seem to think that these laws are intended to squash the competition.

  • From almost two years ago: "Replace React with Mithril for licensing reasons"
    https://github.com/Automattic/... [github.com]

    That said, I still feel Mithril.js + Tachyons.css is a better way to develop web apps (see my other comment on this article).

  • I thought that the problem with the Facebook BSD+Patent license was that they granted you a patent license, but would revoke it if you sued them for patent infringement (even if completely unrelated to the software in question). This new license doesn't grant any patent license at all, so how is that better?

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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