Is this viable to use as a drop in replacement for React? I am concerned about the license using React, that would be the sole reason to chose something else. I also got few projects in React that we would like to keep.
Seems the preact author might want to consider marketing preact as not only the lighter weight alternative, but also the MIT licensed alternative to react (Although if more projects included that surprisingly controversial patent clause it would mark the end of software patents. Isn't that a good thing?)
The only thing we know about FB's patents is that using React means they won't sue you over patents covering React and they won't revoke the grant if you countersue (unless you countersue for patents you hold over React).
The entire hysteria seems to only be backed by armchair lawyering and open source purism (the latter of which is orthogonal to whether there is a legal risk or not). There are plenty of major corporations that likely hold an arsenal of patents who use React despite these concerns.
Unless you're an Apache project (and thus have to worry about open source purity) or a direct competitor who intends to sue people over patents (and thus have to worry about patent warfare), stop worrying about patent grants.
We are approached by a big company to buy our startup. In that case do they have the same limitation of not being able to sue Facebook? Do you think that Amazon or Google would be as happy buying your startup with React as without it? I was just wondering about this angle.
Google uses React. In fact, that's why the language used in the patent grant was changed. https://github.com/facebook/react/issues/7293#issuecomment-2...
Apple uses React. https://twitter.com/soprano/status/705516380913692672
Twitter uses React. https://www.infoq.com/news/2017/02/twitter-react-mobile-stac...
Microsoft uses React. https://microsoft.github.io/reactxp/
Seems like they don't care what some guy on Medium thinks.