Meta will contribute React, React Native, and JSX (JavaScript XML) to a new React Foundation, part of the Linux Foundation, and said that “it is important that no single company or organization is overrepresented.”

The React Foundation will start with seven corporate members – Amazon, Callstack, Expo, Meta, Microsoft, Software Mansion, and Vercel – and its responsibilities will include maintaining React’s infrastructure and trademarks, organizing React Conf, and sponsoring the React ecosystem. The first executive director will be Seth Webster, Meta’s head of React.

React, created by Facebook in 2013, is the most popular JavaScript framework. (Facebook changed its name to Meta in 2021.) The most recent State of JavaScript survey reported usage by over 80 percent of respondents. React Native is a cross-platform UI framework based on React, and while it’s not as dominant as web React, Microsoft is a particularly big user. Usage of React is also likely being boosted by increasing deployment of AI coding tools, which in our experience tend to default to React if not prompted to use a different framework.

React is the most widely used JavaScript front-end framework, though not universally loved

Webster, along with other team members, said that “React has outgrown the confines of any one company.” Along with starting the foundation, the plan is to create a technical governance structure that is independent from it, which the team believes will ensure that no single vendor dominates.

If React gets true independent governance, it will be timely, since there is some unhappiness in the ecosystem regarding vendor involvement, particularly focused on Vercel, sponsor of the React-based Next.js framework. The 21-member React Core team includes five Vercel employees, 14 Meta employees, and two independent members. Next.js is recommended in the React documentation as a framework that “takes full advantage of React’s architecture to create full-stack React apps.” No other framework is described in the same way.

React itself is not a complete framework and does not include important features such as data fetching and routing. The documentation specifically discourages use of React on its own.

Vercel’s business is based on hosting web applications, with Next.js the default choice, and some developers complain that it is difficult to use elsewhere. Netlify, a JavaScript hosting company that competes with Vercel, offers Next.js hosting but complained that Next.js “has no adapter mechanism through which any other actor can support another platform. Rather, Next.js builds use a private, largely undocumented format that is subject to change.”

Not all React developers see Vercel as a bad influence. Mark Erikson, a maintainer of Redux, a state management tool for React, argued earlier this year that the React team needed Vercel to sponsor its plans for React Server Components, for which Meta has no need, and that the company is doing nothing underhanded.

Despite its popularity, React is not universally loved and has come under fire for increasing complexity, particularly for those using its server-side features. “It feels like React generally has an ongoing trajectory towards increasing complexity and features. For something that’s effectively become the standard for frontend that’s unfortunate,” said one developer, commenting on the news and showing that vendor dominance is not the only React ecosystem challenge for the Foundation and forthcoming technical committee to address.®