"Considering almost every single large tech company is using React, presumably there's not much reason for concern? IANAL. "

Actually, React is banned at a number of them, and i've personally discussed the issue with a number of fairly concerned counsel.

So for better or for worse, i don't believe this is as simple as you make it out to be.

Off the top of my head big users of React include:

* Apple (their entire dev docs site is built in it, and they've hosted Bay Area React user meet-ups)

* Twitter (for their mobile web)

* Microsoft (parts of Visual Studio use it)

* Netflix (all over their frontend stack)

...as well as Dropbox, AirBnb, Venmo...

So whilst I don't doubt you've discussed it with concerned counsel, there are huge corporations deploying React today, many of whom have extensive experience dealing with patent and IP issues (Apple, Microsoft, etc).

To add on to this list, even IBM with their large patent portfolio has a large number of teams deploying projects using React and other FB OSS technology.

Disclaimer: I work for IBM.

Yes and for a while it wasn't allowed at IBM either for the same reasons. The latest changes made it possible again which is why now they can/do use it.

Source: Friends at IBM

This is absolutely correct. Before the end of last year, getting approval to use it was a very challenging process.

However, many teams went through the process in order to use it because of how valuable they believe React is to their products. Groups like IBM Watson IoT were fortunate enough to get portfolio-level clearances as well during that time.

Thankfully the process changed and many product teams add React to their list of libraries/frameworks to evaluate for their use-cases.

Are those internal projects? Or external?

A good mix of both, surprisingly :)

To be concrete, IBM Watson has several products that leverage it that we sell to customers. For example, Watson Company Profiler, Watson Virtual Agent, Watson Discovery-related tools, and more.

Other organizations use it as well inside of IBM, like IBM Cloud and IBM Watson IoT, but I'm less familiar with their products off the top of my head.

Maybe they signed separate agreements with FB. Patents sharing or exceptions. Big corporations do that.

I'd like to ask their legals about why they feel OK using React, but I'm too far away. Is anybody here in touch with them?

I don't think so, I work for a big corporation, and our legal department contacted Facebook to confirm the interpretation and ask if a reworking of the license was possible.

It wasn't possible, consequently my company asked that we move away from React.

However, one thing that could be interesting to see is:

* do the companies using React are using the latest version or the last version without the patent clauses?

* do they start new projects with React?

Big companies know they have the resources to devote to a code rewrite if it ever came to that. Small- to mid-size companies are the ones that have the greatest exposure.

Also, it's my opinion that the companies like AirBNB who use it are not considering that it will complicate acquisition by another party. They are basically taking themselves out of contention for purchase by a company that is in direct competition with FB. Maybe, evidently, they don't care but I just hope everyone using it is thinking about such things.

Small to mid-size software companies mostly don't have patents. Naturally they aren't going to be too worried about problems that will only affect them if they are wildly successful. They are more worried about becoming successful in the first place than they are about optimizing their level of success in the unlikely event that they do become that successful.

So, the OP had a question, which was ""Considering almost every single large tech company is using React, presumably there's not much reason for concern? IANAL. ""

I pointed out a number of these are concerned. There is in fact, reason for concern. That doesn't mean people won't use it, it just means they may be willing to take the risk. In fact, some of the counsel who are in fact, concerned, are on your list of big users!

If i have 100 billion dollars in the bank, i may be willing to take more risk around a random open source project than a small startup.

You don't seem to argue the original point at all (ie whether there is cause for concern), just point out "there are lots of people who use it who have extensive experience dealing with IP". I'm not sure how this means there should be no concern.

For example, i know at least a few of those corporations treat React very specially compared to most other open source (in how they use it, in how they try to segregate it, etc).

So yeah.

>* Microsoft (parts of Visual Studio use it)

you mean vs code, which is a separate product from "visual studio"

Vscode does not use react specifically for the licensing reason. I don’t know if they do now but when I was at MS this was the case. I know many teams at MS who evaluated react and lawyers strictly advised to stay away from it. I hear things have changed a bit, but you’ll never see Office and Windows use it.

Office uses react already: https://github.com/OfficeDev/office-ui-fabric-react

That’s not “Office uses React”, it’s a “collection of robust components designed to make it quick and simple for you to create web experiences using the Office Design Language.”

Do you really see no difference between the two?

The React components are being used on production Office websites/webapps. Source: I'm a Microsoft employee working on this project.

http://www.reactnative.tools/ React Native at Microsoft

Very limited “use”; mostly just enabling external developers to interface using React to their existing tools (that are not using React). If the Armageddon should come, and Microsoft is to enter a legal patent dispute/battle, stopping this React “use” is a no-op for Microsoft.

Microsoft builds Skype on React Native. They use React in production on several websites including outlook.com. They are using it internally and not just for external devs.

Also see this HN thread from a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12108273

You'd be actually surprised how many teams inside Microsoft wrote their own smaller versions of OS libraries. It happened a lot less after Nadella era, but Ballmer era had a "we can't use anything not built here"

VS (the big one, not VSCode) has a bunch of stuff in it written in HTML5/JS.

The relatively new client framework for SharePoint Online is also based on React.

Can you add a short elaboration on the visual Studio bit? I use visual studio every day in my day job and am very curious how react fits into that.

VS and EdgeDevTools use InfernoJS I believe. Another VDOM implementation.

Funny enough that the author of Inferno now works for React team at Facebook. Inferno was a great project with perf that blows react out the water. Not sure if it’s maintained anymore.

He intentionally left the project to protect the IP of Inferno from falling into the same patent'y business is what I heard.

This wasn't the case. I left the project to focus my attention on React.

Haha! When the author actually comes to clarify and make a response. Oh! I love HN!

It seems like Google is the only one that stands out.

If you're concerned about React, then Preact is actually significantly worse.

Consider: The risk for React is based on 1) speculation that Facebook has patents on core React concepts and 2) the fact that patent grant that comes with React terminates in some situations if you end up in conflict with Facebook. So for safety, it might be better to make sure you use code that Facebook has no patents on, which (if (1) above is true) means "code that is nothing like react at all".

A React clone that doesn't have the patent grant at all is vulnerable to all the same issues React itself is, plus more. It's strictly more dangerous than using React itself.

(Unless, of course, we assume there's some bit of React that's subject to a Facebook-owned patent that would not also apply to Preact. But having spent a few minutes thinking about it, nothing leaps out at me.)

If Facebook can has patents that cover Preact, they likely cover parts of every JavaScript framework out there.

React is a functional component library that uses the virtual DOM. It's well executed, but it's a simple concept.

Yep. And if Facebook has such patents, I wouldn't be surprised if Google, Microsoft, Oracle, etc. do too.

The more you think about the ramifications, the more I come to the conclusion that software patents are an existential threat.

Tip: move to the EU.

The EU does not recognise software patents.

This is not true, since Preact only implements the same software interface. Its internals are fundamentally different and not a derivative work.

Software interfaces cannot be patented - this has been upheld in every court, most recently in Google V Oracle.

> Its internals are fundamentally different and not a derivative work.

That would be a strong defence to a copyright claim. We're talking about patents, where there is no concept of "derivative works", and what matters isn't implementations but broad concepts.

> Software interfaces cannot be patented

Right, but what makes Preact concerning isn't that it offers the same API, but that it is built using the same underlying concepts.

Preact renders independent, encapsulated, nested, functional-ish components, usually but not always written in JSX, into a virtual DOM. Components are rerendered to the virtual DOM when their inputs change, and then diffing is used to efficiently sync the virtual DOM with the browser DOM.

If Facebook has some sort of patent covering the virtual DOM (although thankfully as far as I know, they don't), it's hard to see how it would not also cover Preact. And this is true even if, as I assume is the case, Preact shares 0 lines of code with React.

Edit: To be clear, I don't believe the patent situation is concerning, I think Preact is a great project, and I may well be using it in production soon. But if I was worried about Facebook's patent portfolio, I would be worried about using Preact.

Understandable, and agreed about my point being for copyright as opposed to patents. It's interesting to note that, since the majority of DOM rendering libraries now employ some variant of Virtual DOM (react, preact, mithril, glimmer/ember, angular, even polymer!), a patent claim covering the concept of Virtual DOM itself would likely be invalid - the presence of so many prior and contemporary implementations of that paradigm make would invalidate it on the grounds that it cannot be "Non-obvious" or "non-novel". My knowledge of this stuff is largely gleaned from Wikipedia and thus not to be trusted, but it seems like there would be little grounds for a patent suit over VDOM. Also interesting to note: there are few (if any?) other companies directly associated with any of the other VDOM implementations - can a patent claim even be made against an Open Source project?

Lots of large companies are not using React because of the licence. It's just that companies generally don't talk about legal matters like this openly. So you only hear about who is using it, not who isn't.

Often the large companies that are using React have patent cross-licensing agreements with Facebook (or other special arrangements) that make the issue moot for them.

Otherwise, getting your in-house council (or even your board, depending on the situation/risk) to approve of using React with the very broad patent restrictions can be an uphill battle indeed.

My most recent 'big' fortune 500 company put me under very strict legal terms regarding what type of software I was allowed to use. Any code I didn't write 100% myself had to be approved by legal before it could be used in software I wrote for them.

No, seriously, that is what the contract said.

In reality, the bulk of developers used whatever they wanted with no consideration. I assume other contractors were under similar legal terms, but not sure about employees. I was seen as a pain when I kept asking for formal permission for stuff.

>My most recent 'big' fortune 500 company put me under very strict legal terms regarding what type of software I was allowed to use. Any code I didn't write 100% myself had to be approved by legal before it could be used in software I wrote for them.

Back in the day, this was the norm.

>In reality, the bulk of developers used whatever they wanted with no consideration.

This wasn't - it was grounds for termination.

I remember stuff like - (for Windows C++) you can use Microsoft MFC and Microsoft STL - anything else you write from scratch.

Legal wasn't very flexible back then.

If the other developers did so without asking formal permission, then if the company was sued, they'll just pass it on to the developer.

The happy medium that I've found is to provide a list of acceptable licenses and let lead engineers audit that software to be included obey them.

but still many licenses have legal requirements. i.e. I was working at a fortune 50 rare open source project, we had an acceptable license list but still all the source code needed to be audited for dependencies licenses and the legal team produced the license file to be included in distribution with all the notices as required by mit and apache

I tried very hard to negotiate that happy medium, but was shot down.

> Considering almost every single large tech company is using React

React isn't as popular in the real world as it is on HN.

Wal-Mart, Baidu, Spotify, Netflix, Coinbase, Wired, Yahoo, Atlassian, AirBnB, Asana, Atlassian, BBC, Chegg, CloudFlare, CNN.com, Codecademy, Coursera, Craftsy, Dailymotion, Dropbox, Expedia, Facebook, Feedly, Flipboard, HipChat, IMDb, Imgur, Instagram, Khan Academy, KISSmetrics, Mattermark, Minerva Project, Netflix, OkCupid, Rackspace, Rally Software, Ralph Lauren, Reddit, Redfin, Salesforce, Squarespace, The New York Times, Trunk Club, Twitter, Uber, University of Cincinnati, Venmo, WhatsApp, Wired, Wix, WordPress, Yahoo, Zendesk, Microsoft, Apple

If y'all think you're going to find some edge case that these companies lawyers haven't already...

Well, I guess it depends on what you mean 'almost every single large tech company', but React is used by Facebook (of course), Apple, Twitter, Yahoo, Netflix, Amazon, just to name a few.

I know atleast one of these companies (I can't speak for the rest) had a pre-existing bi-lateral patent agreement with Facebook which rendered the react patent clause irrelevant, allowing them to use react without concern. Without that existing agreement this would not have been the case.

I would certainly concede that. And I'm not trying to rain on React's parade here. I'm just saying that HN is particularly pro-React as a community.

you have only named a few though; 'almost every single large tech company' requires a particular definition of large tech company or a lot more than a few to be a useful(ly true) statement

Take a look here:

https://github.com/facebook/react/wiki/sites-using-react

...that's obviously not complete, either. If you think of a large tech company the odds are they are using react somewhere for something, be it public facing or internal tooling. Many of the companies that aren't actively using React do so because they have their own JS stacks to dogfood (like Google and Angular).

Google hardly dogfoods Angular. They use Closure for most of their apps. SPF for YouTube. Polymer in some places. GWT in many others.

Well, anecdotally speaking of course, my company does work for most of the major (a) banks, (b) telcos and (c) insurance companies in Canada, and the majority of them are moving from Angular 1.x to React (because Angular 4 is a mess) for their front-end work, both on the public and secure side of things.

Hopefully they've all done their due diligence..

That's interesting. I've done a good deal of work in all three verticals and introducing a restricted license in any of their environments would have been a tough sell that involved a legal review and a well documented business case. I can think of a few where I can guarantee they would never allow it - and not based on any problems with React's license in particular, but because of internal history.

I wouldn't be surprised if the choice of front-end framework for website development is still below the radar of legal/compliance for some of these places..

A lot of these groups still see front-end tech as just HTML and CSS..

What sort of things would banks, telcos, and insurance companies typically patent? These don't strike me as innovation-oriented companies.

If you don't have any patents, you're not really risking anything using React.

Are you joking, or you just don't know? Telcos alone have a huge list of patents which they are happy to use in the courtroom, and they have won cases in the millions USD. Verizon ranked 52nd in the world for patents granted in 2016.

Bank of America was ranked 124th for its number of U.S. patents granted in 2016.

http://www.ipo.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/2016_Top-300-P...

wouldn't that mean that your company is covered by the react clause but your clients aren't? of course they're not worried, if they're a separate entity they aren't the one in the agreement.

We typically deliver pages and/or SPAs into their existing environments, where these libraries are already installed globally, so I don't think so.

Some large tech companies may have large coffers of money and other bargaining power, and thus use React.

Many don't, and don't.

BTW one can use [preact] which is an almost drop-in replacement, but smaller, and is under MIT license.

[preact]: https://github.com/developit/preact/

I suspect that for a lot of those it's a case of "the development guys want to use this open source library" and nobody in legal has ever been asked. For large companies this is likely an annoyance move, with the argument that nobody who chose to use it is authorized to make that kind of patent - related agreements any more than they're authorized to sell office buildings or manufacturing facilities, but for small tech startups of the sort that Facebook once was this may be a huge hammer.

Thank you for telling us about preact. Is there a good react-native alternative? Our team has bound our codebase pretty tightly to react and react-native (optimized for code sharing).

Preact compat mode is amazing. Highly recommended.

We've begun work on a NativeScript integration that would meet this need. It's early stage though.

I believe some of the larger companies negotiate special/alternative licenses with them though.

I dunno "every single large company" seems like an overstatement. Maybe thats the reason some of big enterprises are still on Angular and Polymer - some go for Vue. Some of them also have BSD+Patents but its less broad.

Preact is not an alternative I'd reccomend. It's riddled with very serious bugs. I've found it incredibly difficult to work with.

Could I ask what those bugs we're and if you had filed an issue for them? I don't have any deployed projects based on it, but I've played with it and talked to the main dev a couple of times - he's usually very on top of it.

I'd be curious to hear about this too - I don't see any issues filed or commented on by him, perhaps the bugs are more perceptual mismatches with his React experience as opposed to actual bugs. We only recently released preact/debug, which brings with it some of the guardrails React ships by default - maybe without those people run into issues.

FWIW there are hundreds of companies (some very very large) using Preact in production. If there were showstopper bugs, they'd be fixed immediately.

I think this may be referring to "preact-compat" issues rather than Preact issues. I know the Inferno team recently had to change a lot of the state scheduling to be 1:1 with React 15/16 (i.e. batch sync schedule setState after events was very broken and there were issues with controlled components in Safari).

https://github.com/developit/preact/issues - would you mind logging them as issues?

Are we talking about the same? I only use preact because react is so weight for the web :)

>Considering almost every single large tech company is using React,

How did you arrive at that conclusion?