In reply to Rick Gregory.

That's a fair point, Rick, we're always aiming to be more open with the decision making process. It's kind of boring process thing, but since you asked, let me lay out a rough timeline of how this all happened: 🙂

There were several discussions on JavaScript frameworks in May, starting around mid-May, with the outcome at the end of May being to review the discussions at the WCEU Community Summit. (The Summit intentionally tries to include a wide range of contributors, with varying points of view, who can ultimately make decisions as representatives of their team. You can read more about it here.)

Fast forward to mid-June, the outcome of the Summit was that React was the best technical choice, but the patent grant was a concern, and the wider WordPress community felt strongly about being able to use the tools they're most familiar with.

Now early July, the announcement post was drafted, and we'd just started privately reaching out to contacts at Facebook, to work on the final blocker of the patent grant. Right about that time, the whole Apache/React thing happened, which unfortunately lead to Facebook deciding that they didn't want to change their patent grant.

I understand that the period of silence here was frustrating, but adding to the public pressure on Facebook would not have been a wise choice - there was already plenty of public pressure. Under the circumstances, our voice wouldn't have mattered so much.

Ultimately, the outcome has been quite positive for the WordPress community, and the wider Open Source world - Facebook have chosen to relicense React under the MIT license, there's significant interest from a wide range of JavaScript frameworks in prioritising interoperability, and Gutenberg's work on framework agnosticism gives them a practical testbed for improving interoperability.

If you're interested in more closely participating in these discussions, you'd be well served by attending this week's JavaScript meeting, where the primary topic will be continuing the framework discussion. If you're unable to attend at that time, you should post a comment on that post, or on the summary post that will appear on make/core shortly after the meeting.

I'd also note that, just because Facebook have changed the React license, the ultimate decision will not necessarily be to use React. React certainly has some technical strengths, but there are also good arguments for Vue or Preact. Similarly, there's a good argument that Web Components (probably via a framework like Polymer or Stencil) is a better match for WordPress' open web philosophies.

All up, though, I wouldn't worry too much about this decision. The far more important part is that you'll be able to write Gutenblocks using whatever framework you prefer, and this focus on interoperability will drive WordPress' JavaScript development for many years to come. 🎉