Ask HN: What will happen to React if we #deleteFacebook? - wvlia5
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eloff
React is open-source it will live on.

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.

~~~
ksec
I thought Facebook going down was way overblown too, so i decided to ask my
friends, many are just there to buy clothes, social sharing or reading up
shared news. They are normal, everyday users, who are not into tech at all.
There answer were along the line;

1\. What is Cambridge Analytics's?

2\. I dont know what happen to facebook recently.

3\. My data is being collected? So?

4\. Oh

5\. Can I still buy and shop on Facebook?

6\. Why would I delete facebook?

I think it is clear, apart from those of use who really cared about tech, or
those live in US felt being used as tools in politics, many around the world
dont give a damn.

I am tempted to buy into Facebook stock as well ( may be for it to lower a
little more ), while none of the post 2000 born teenagers i knew has a
Facebook account, they knew IG. Really IG is the new Facebook. Whatsapp is
still growing.

~~~
agnivade
> My data is being collected? So?

I have had this exact same response from so many of my friends. I find myself
hard to explain in a manner that is non-technical. Is there a nice explanation
that I can say when someone tells this to me next time ?

~~~
jfoster
What's the explanation if you can be as technical as you want?

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michael_storm
Facebook itself won't be meaningfully "deleted" for at _least_ five years. It
simply has too much money: even if its main product went kaput tomorrow (which
it won't), it would find some other way to stay alive. That would almost
certainly be via an acquisition spree, in which it would go to great lengths
to tie its targets' platforms into facebook.com, which is based on React
(AFAIK). So the answer is: nothing.

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.

------
mesozoic
Wait 3 months and a new javascript framework will be en vogue.

~~~
chrisco255
As far as UI frameworks go, JS fatigue has slowed down dramatically in the
past couple years.

~~~
antoineMoPa
What? I'm 24 and I already feel like I'm outdated in web dev, because:

* Vue appeared in the last couple of years (At least I learned that)

* Everyone uses React and I never wanted to use it because facebook.

* npm is not cool now it's yarn

* var is not cool now it's let

* Babel is in every new project now, all your browser supporting mind is useless now.

* Vue alone is not cool, now you have to use vue-x

* Bootstrap is not cool, now it's materialize/bulma/whatever

Everything is changing all the time. 1 year after you typed something, it is
outdated or vulnerable because of some dependency.

~~~
chrisco255
Vue arrived in 2013 I believe, but it has gotten more popular in the past
year. React's a good framework regardless of Facebook's flaws as a company.
NPM's functionality has caught up with Yarn and NPM 5+ is pretty solid
overall. The competition from Yarn was good for NPM and helped improve its
design. But in terms of UI frameworks, we seem to have peaked. New frameworks
are coming out, to be sure...but it seems like devs are pretty happy with
React/Vue or React clones at this point.

~~~
antoineMoPa
Vue was originally released in 2014 according to Wikipedia, and as you say, it
got popular in the past year or two. With this and all the stuff you
mentioned, that's a lot of stuff happening in a small amount of time. That is
not an environment to build a stable code base. Meanwhile, python changed one
function in 7 years and everyone is complaining (print now needs parenthesis).

~~~
chrisco255
Haha, you're forgetting the whole Python 2 vs 3 fiasco. But also, if you look
back at JS back in 2012/2013, there were 6 or 7 popular UI frameworks
(AngularJS, Knockout, JQuery, Ember, etc). It was churning very fast. React
has been dominant for 3 years now and I don't see it slowing down.

~~~
antoineMoPa
I mentionned the print statement, which is honestly what was keeping most
people from migrating to 3.

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d--b
It's MIT licensed and widely used. So we're only a fork away from a facebook-
independent React...

~~~
bdcravens
Need for funding is a thing, but I'd presume AirBnB or Dropbox or any of the
many others listed on [https://github.com/facebook/react/wiki/Sites-Using-
React](https://github.com/facebook/react/wiki/Sites-Using-React) would step
up.

~~~
droidist2
Good point. I wonder if too many of them would step up though and we'd have 4
different *-react forks all with significant mindshare, weakening the
community by splintering it.

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dudul
#deleteFacebook is not going anywhere. In 2 weeks, people will be outraged at
something else and move on.

~~~
raksDev
I second your opinion. React Native has come a long way but it has failed
somehow to prove its worth. Well, Before anyone bombards me with the criticism
I would want to clarify that I am talking about performance here (Specially on
Android)

~~~
solarkraft
It's bad, like most web technologies [used to make rich interfaces].

But it works. Well enough for _a lot_ of people to adopt it.

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elliotlarson
I mean, Facebook is losing money right now, but I don't think they're going
anywhere.

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.

~~~
zombieprocesses
Facebook isn't losing money. They are one of the most profitable companies in
the world. Changes in market cap != losing money.

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/277229/facebooks-
annual-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/277229/facebooks-annual-
revenue-and-net-income/)

They made nearly $16 billion in net profit last year.

------
akmarinov
[https://vimeo.com/260417482](https://vimeo.com/260417482)

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.

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cjbprime
It'd probably transition to something like a React Foundation governance
model, still open source.

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.

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iliaznk
FB is not the only project where React is used, take Instagram for example
(also owned by MZ and that's where React originated from in the first place,
as far as I know). Moreover, I'm sure FB will live on for years to come.

------
rimliu
I hope we will start asking ourselves "do I even need React for this
project?".

