Ask HN: What will happen to React if we #deleteFacebook?

But to address your underlying implication that Facebook is going down, as much as many of us would like to believe otherwise, this will blow over in a matter of weeks. Facebook will emerge out the other side stronger than ever. The outrage machine of the internet is working well lately, but it's still mostly toothless. Even potential regulator or court involvement is unlikely to result in more than a token slap on the wrist if history is any guide. People have too short a collective memory and attention span to produce long-lasting changes. Look at Volkswagon, stronger than ever after going through much harsher public outrage and regulatory action.

I'm tempted to buy Facebook stock, on the premise that people seem to be overeacting and that's always a potential for profit. I strongly dislike Facebook personally, and don't have a Facebook account.

That said, what if, as a thought experiment, Facebook imploded tomorrow? It reminds me of the "what if the Sun disappeared" scenario -- it's not that it's _unlikely_; it's that it would require new physics to even get you there. So speculation is somewhat idle. That said, here's what I think would happen:

1) The core contributors would be snapped up by some open source-adjacent organization, like Mozilla, and given free reign to work on React in the majority of their time.

2) Some sort of new, independent governance would be formed. IME, new web projects seem to be more ad-hoc in this respect than, say, GNU brethren.

3) Development velocity would undoubtedly slow down. This happens naturally as projects mature, though, so let's not mourn the inevitable process of nature.

4) Some idealistic fork will pick up a bit of steam, and the sister projects will steal from each other liberally. Like bacteria, politicians (zing), or anything else that competes.

5) Something else will rise to take React's place.

But again, it doesn't matter, because Facebook won't disappear on a time scale that matters relative to the velocity of JS development.

But, for the sake of argument, let's say everyone deletes their account and Facebook goes away. React is open source. The people from Facebook working on React would probably just get jobs with some other company that relies on React and continue working on React.

Check out this talk from Artsy. Orta says that they'll continue supporting RN, even if Facebook drops it tomorrow. They won't push it forward, but Facebook dropping it is extremely unlikely.

This is probably something that will happen anyway given enough time. So it would happen faster. Development would slow down for a while if Facebook pulls out engineering resources.