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Comment by ericjang | Hacker News Reader

The software engineering quality of FB's open source projects is simply amazing.

I used to think that a lot of their projects were trying too much to re-invent the wheel, but now I see it as an uncompromising attitude towards having the most streamlined development experience. I also really appreciate the strong commitment to open source.

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I find it amusing that Chrome, the Google open-source project that this is built on, receives so little praise in the developer community. Perhaps it is because Facebook builds things primarily for developers, versus Google which seems to be function-driven (eg bettering the whole internet instead of self-serving within the developer community).

It is not specifically built on Chrome. It happens to be developed on chrome because that's the tool of choice of Facebook devs. Incidentally, a Firefox version is now available.

> It is not specifically built on Chrome. > It happens to be developed on chrome

This is contradictory.

In fact, it isn't. From a quick perusal of the github repo[1], it seems that the react devtools can mostly stand alone, and have wrapping shells that access the Chrome and Firefox APIs when necessary. Here's the plain shell: [2]. My understanding is that the GP was trying to convey this architectural flexibility while pointing out that the Chrome shell is more mature because it is the tool of choice for most devs at Facebook.

[1]: https://github.com/facebook/react-devtools/ [2]: https://github.com/facebook/react-devtools/tree/master/shell...

It is, at least the way the OP put it. I was pointing out the absurdity of saying something A isn't specifically built on B, then immediately acknowledging that A is in fact built on B.

But I'm happy to hear the original statement isn't totally accurate.

There's a difference between being "built on chrome", ie relying on the Chrome source, and simply being developed on Chrome, ie developed using Chrome. It's like someone building a website. They might use Chrome to do their development, but that doesn't mean the website is somehow built on top of Chrome.

"built on" is not necessarily synonymous with "developed on".

he was making it straight that chrome is not some enabler of anything. it's actually still catching up.

I disagree that Chrome gets little praise from the developer community. What makes you say that?

Chrome is a mature product; in its earlier days, it received tons of praise. Now it's like git or jQuery, with a long history of stability and accolades, and now it's just a cemented part of the ecosystem.

Also, Google builds tons of things for the developer community. Anguar, Google fonts, Material design, and more, are centerpieces of many modern websites.

Amusing? Perhaps because it worms on Firefox as well. And perhaps Safari down the road. Amusing?

>I also really appreciate the strong commitment to open source.

If anything they did a great disservice to the spirit of open source by including this in their oss

https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/master/PATENTS

I honestly don't care about any of their oss, but this is setting a dangerous precedent .

Is the text there substantially different than the patent grant under the Apache 2.0 license? I see a patent grant as a good thing.

There was this explanation from an HN user: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8901357

But Facebook made changes since then: http://www.infoworld.com/article/2908879/open-source-softwar...

I don't know much about it, just giving you links.

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