damosneeze

FB: "...we know that many teams went through the process of selecting an alternative library to React. We're sorry for the churn. We don't expect to win these teams back by making this change, but we do want to leave the door open."

This can seem like a response to the community at large, but can also be read as a direct response to Wordpress' comments:

WP: Automattic will also use whatever we choose for Gutenberg to rewrite Calypso — that will take a lot longer, and Automattic still has no issue with the patents clause, but the long-term consistency with core is worth more than a short-term hit to Automattic’s business from a rewrite. Core WordPress updates go out to over a quarter of all websites, having them all inherit the patents clause isn’t something I’m comfortable with.

Now if someone (i.e. an Actual, Impartial Lawyer) can explain if changing to MIT actually changes anything.

EDIT:

As others have pointed out, FB reaffirmed its decision to maintain the patents clause on Aug 18th (33 days ago): We recognize that we may lose some React community members because of this decision. [1] But they change their minds 8 days after the Matt published the On React and Wordpress article.

This pretty much proves that the decision to move to MIT was heavily influenced -- or perhaps in direct response to -- Wordpress' decision to ditch React.

Since we also do private consulting and project-based work in addition to our workshops, we have recently got to talking with our clients about helping them get full-time employment. So I think this post is pretty timely and very relevant to us. Here are a few reasons why we think React is important for the job market.

Lots of companies are choosing React for their front-end these days. It allows your front-end devs to embrace the full power of JavaScript for the front-end -- no more messing around with jQuery and tons of plugins. Sure, there's a bit of a learning curve, like all new things. But there is now a large and devoted community to React and it's only growing. A personal friend of mine convinced his boss to greenfield their entire app with 10,000 lines of jQuery, and rewrite it entirely in React. He was a new hire (and also a great communicator/salesman).

Fortunately we had the benefit of selecting from a large number of applicants, and we required a brief selection examination. Most were already strong in JavaScript and many even had ES6 and React experience. So learning React & Redux, and grasping the concept of webpack and React Router was not too difficult for that group.

However if you're coming fresh into the React ecosystem, and especially front-end development on the whole, it's important that you don't try to learn all of these things at once, as many have pointed out here. Our current workshops are focused on learning React and React alone. For example, our current "build an e-commerce app with React" workshop gives you a boilerplate with everything you need, and we build out the application from that point.