Why Facebook Switched React’s License to MIT – What It Means for Developers

React’s licensing controversy erupted as Facebook faced heavy criticism from developers and the open‑source community after announcing a change to the license of several of its projects.

Companies such as Apache, WordPress, and Baidu quickly announced they would block or discontinue using React.

Facebook engineer Adam Wolff wrote on the company blog that next week React, Jest, Flow, and Immutable.js will be relicensed under the MIT license.

After weeks of disappointment and community uncertainty, we made this decision. Although we still believe the "BSD + Patent" license offers convenience, we admit we failed to convince the React community. Because of the uncertainty around our license, many teams are looking for React alternatives. We apologize for the inconvenience. While we don’t expect those teams to return because of this decision, we do want to keep the door open. This shift naturally raises questions about the licenses of other Facebook open‑source projects. Many of our popular projects will continue to follow the "BSD + Patent" license, and each project will be evaluated individually. Next week we will release React 16 and change its license to MIT. React 16 has been in development for over a year; we completely rewrote its internal architecture to unlock powerful features that will help everyone build user interfaces at scale. We will later share how we rewrote React, hoping to inspire developers everywhere, regardless of whether they use React. We hope the license discussion will be set aside so we can focus on delivering great products.

HN user cies compiled a list of Facebook open‑source projects that currently use the "BSD + Patent" license:

ReasonML

GraphQL

React‑Native

PlanOut

Flow

Haxl

Flux

Community reactions:

Li: No need to imagine Baidu will create something on its own; it’s too passive. 张会飞: Baidu: fb, you’re an internet company, didn’t expect you to poison the code. 王志伟: This is clearly to push you to learn, build the ecosystem, then change the license. Yizhao Yu: I don’t know how WordPress and Baidu feel, but I can see how their programmers feel. 刘三德: Too early to be happy; it doesn’t include React Native. edc: Will you eat your own leftovers? 微风吹过: Big companies will probably still switch; another license change would be too passive. 高晟涵: Baidu and WordPress are probably happy because they don’t need to spend months updating, just a simple upgrade.

Facebook still has many popular open‑source projects that retain the BSD+Patent license, and each will be evaluated individually. React Native currently keeps its original patent license, with no announced change date.

In summary, the company acknowledges the criticism, reverts to a more permissive MIT license for key projects, and hopes this demonstrates progress and a willingness to listen to the developer community.