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Comment by CharlesW | Hacker News Reader

> As our general counsel wrote, we made the decision that we'd never run into the patent issue. That is still true today as it was then, and overall, we’ve been really happy with React.

Okay.

> …I'm here to say that the Gutenberg team is going to take a step back and rewrite Gutenberg using a different library.

Am I the only one missing the "why"?

> …passing down to our users.

Is that the "why"? If so, what does he mean by it? Meaning: What is the "danger" that Matt says Automattic will never run into, but that WordPress users will run into?

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>Is that the "why"? If so, what does he mean by it? Meaning: What is the "danger" that Matt says Automattic will never run into, but that WordPress users will run into?

He answered that already. He doesn't believe there's much (if any) danger, but:

"we have a lot of problems to tackle, and convincing the world that Facebook’s patent clause is fine isn’t ours to take on. It’s their fight".

So what they don't want to "pass down to [their] users" is not something they believe is an actual danger, but the anxiety about the licensing that users would face and the arguments etc that will erupt over this.

In other words they're optimizing for bullshit avoidance - absolutely a valid decision. Or another way to put it would be that they don't want to be in the business of having to sell Facebook's legal turds. ("Sell" as in "persuade people to accept.") There are other client-side frameworks that don't carry that kind of baggage.

Frankly they get bonus points in my book just for the mere act of divesting from something Facebook owns, so that would've been a good enough reason for me. But hey, they also get to retain their right to sue Facebook if needed.

It's saddling WordPress's massive user base with Facebook's patent clause – something the userbase likely won't realise they're agreeing to when they use WordPress.

I think when Matt says "long-term consistency with core" he also means consistency with the philosophical aspects of free software. Note that the piece starts with Facebook's reaction to the Apache Foundation's stance against using React.

If I understand correctly, the Calypso project was related to the administrative dashboard in their hosted WP offering (and other widgets that could be used in self-hosted WP.) Going forward it looks like Gutenberg is also about the code in the pages that visitors see on published sites.

Gutenberg will be distributed with WordPress itself as the new post editor. This means the license(s) used with it will then apply to users of WordPress, who may or may not want to agree with React's license despite Automattic (WordPress.com) being comfortable with it via Calypso (WP.com's front end).

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