'Better' is dependent on the viewpoint. Russian tanks were simpler mechanically, ran on diesel, which made them less flammable and in the early years the T34 was actually better than anything the wehrmacht had. The Panther is almost a direct copy of the T34 design. But you are right, at the end the quantities prevailed, it was a war of economies and Russia, having transferred most of its industry far east and out of reach, was going to win, even without the help from west. Most of the german generals knew they were toast after the initial blitz failed in the winter of '41.
> But you are right, at the end the quantities prevailed, it was a war of economies
My point was the German generals knew this well beforehand. Everyone knew they couldn't beat the Russians in a straight up one-on-one war over a long timespan. They only had a short time window to run them over with their tank/aircraft tactics. And that failed because the Nazi's largely underplayed the quality of Russian tanks/technology.
It doesn't matter if you have 10 German tanks vs 1 Russian tank if those ten tanks can't penetrate the armour of the Russian one. This is a critical difference. Especially when the Nazi's were already strapped for fuel and armaments. Which is why a small number of KV-1s would grind the invasion to a halt until reinforcements could arrive.
As soon as they had to wait for the supply lines and infantry to catch up then the Blitzkrieg tactics are no longer effective and Nazi Germany is now facing Russia on their terms.
It's amazing how this is seemingly such a controversial topic when plenty of well researched literature will back me up here...
The T-34 was better than what the Germans had at the time.
The T-34 platform was more effective because it vastly outnumbered all German tank models combined, ran on diesel, was easier to repair/replace, and the Soviets were willing to absorb more personnel losses.
If you're saying you'd rather go into battle with 5 fully operational T-34s than 5 fully operational Tigers, then we seriously disagree.
The Tiger was a response to the T-34. "At the time" means "at the start of the war". Eventually, the T-34 was overshadowed by better tanks, and the war saw enormous advancements in tank technology. Largely due to the Russians, who were ahead in tank technology at the start of the war.
At the start of the war, the Germans had nothing that could touch a T-34. Well, no they had no comparable tank; T-34s are vulnerable from the air, and the Germans had Stukas.
It's worth nothing that due to the need to churn out T-34s at a rapid pace, the quality sometimes suffered, and some T-34s were badly put together. Also, it was a very uncomfortable tank to use, and the turret of that early version was too small.
But assuming I get fully functional T-34s, I'd absolutely prefer to go to war with 5 T-34s than with 5 PzIV-Ds or PzIIIs, which was the best the Germans had at the time.
And the Russians were defending against an invasion that critically depended on a short (~half year from summer 1942) invasion timeline.
The German generals (and to a lesser extant Hitler) knew Russia could ramp up tank production fast and had way more soldiers then them if it turned into trench warfare or even total warfare level tank vs tank or aircraft vs aircraft fights. Largely because Germany already had to deal with the UK+America+Canada on the other front and we themselves limited in their own production ability vs the much larger Russia (regardless if the Russian industry was less advanced, it was still more advanced than the biased Germans expected the slavs to be).
The simple fact the Russian's had ANY tanks that they couldn't easily deal with, let alone not destroy at all with their own tanks, totally caught the Nazi generals off guard and slowed the whole invasion down.
The technological advantage that Russia had early on can not be downplayed. It was absolutely critical.
Had they kept Hitler's egomaniacal lust to crush Stalingrad itself at bay and instead simply encircled Stalingrad to cut off its supplies and proceed to take the Caucasus oil fields instead, the whole war could have turned differently.
Also comparing very different tanks in a general manner has its problems: each has its strong and weak points, it is very difficult to say which one of the differences would be of benefit in a given battle.
Unless of course the Germans did not factor in the idea Russians would have a comparable, let alone better, tank than them when they invaded.
They expected a repeat of the French army capitulation and found a far better army than their anti-slavic literature groomed them to believe they'd be facing.
They expected Russian farmer rednecks, not an industrialized modern army (although I refuse to extend my praise to their infantry which had plenty of issues, other than their dogged determination, which was a serious threat when Hitler was demanding quick wins, even when they did always eventually win).
How has he never heard "I want to invent the future", I thought that was pretty much a staple. I've heard that in business consulting interviews for years.
Patents regard underlying functionality so if Preact infringes on the patent through using the same or sufficiently similar mechnism's to react functionality, it's a toss up but due to the nature of open source code the user might be liable.
Depends on the ruling of use of open source code that is in a way productized.
Also depends on if Preact's implementation is sufficient to infringe on React's patents (if they have any weight to them that is and are upheld)
Its not a random library, its extremely similar to React.
Nope. If Facebook owns any patents for mechanisms that are used in Preact, they can sue you.
I'll say more: if you use Preact and there are such patents (I have no idea if there are any), they could sue you even if you don't sue them first, because Preact isn't covered by any patent grant.
If I were Facebook and a patent troll, I would closely inspect what Preact does and what patents I have that cover it and then go out and sue every company openly using Preact preemptively because switching from React to Preact indicates they might be planning to sue me in the future (and if I bankrupt them, I might acquire their patents this way).
That Facebook isn't doing this should tell you something.
I have no idea where this comes from but this doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
React comes with two things:
* a copyright license for the source code, which is a BSD-style open source license
* a patents grant license for "the React software distributed by Facebook" (i.e. official React releases but not third-party forks)
The former is unconditional except as defined in the terms of the BSD-style license itself. It does not magically terminate even if you walk up to Mark Zuckerberg and personally punch him in the face.
The latter is conditional and terminates if you sue Facebook, or if you get sued by Facebook and countersue over patents covering React. If Facebook sues you and you countersue them over a patent covering e.g. their social graph algorithms, you are still protected by the React patent grant. Only if you also happen to have patents covering React and decide to use them to countersue when Facebook sues you over other patents they hold, only then the patent grant is revoked.
Patents don't give a fuck about source code. Software patents are about abstract ideas. Source code is an expression of that idea and thus only protected by copyright. Software patents apply whether the patent holder expressed that idea or anybody else did.
If Preact does something the same way React does something and Facebook has a patent for that, you have no protection whatsoever. Even worse: Facebook likely already knows which of their patents apply to Preact or not, so if they wanted they could easily sue you for using Preact if they had such patents and felt particularly patent trollish that day.
You can't escape this. You don't know whether Facebook has patents for React. But you also don't know whether Facebook has patents for Angular, or Vue or Ember or even jQuery.
Angular, Vue, Ember and Preact are using the MIT license with no patent grant. Sure, if you're lucky, a court might say that the license implies a patent grant but there is no language in that license to hint that this is in any way intended (unlike, say, the Apache license).
Oh, and even if the MIT license would imply an unconditional patent grant, what makes you think the authors hold all the relevant patents? What if Facebook owns a patent for Vue? What if Google holds a patent for Ember? What if Apple holds a patent for React?
The reason you're upset isn't that React has an explicit patent grant with explicit limits. The reason you're upset is that you don't like software patents.
That's fair and I personally think software patents are bullshit, but raging against Facebook or worse the React maintainers over this and spreading FUD is not how you deal with it.
Ecosystem is so important these days, there might be technical reasons for choosing this but considering the support (knowing stack overflow answers will be available) and pre-existing component ecosystems for Vue & React, I can't see a reason anyone would pick this.
Disappointed to see no forward upfront stance on what Facebook will do if someone sues them for a patent infringement unrelated to React in any way.
Will note though that if Facebook does choose to revoke a license on the basis of getting sued for something unrelated it will definitely reflect poorly on FB in the developer community and reduce React's adoption.
> Disappointed to see no forward upfront stance on what Facebook will do if someone sues them for a patent infringement unrelated to React in any way.
Well, they've specifically related React if it's in use, so the only case where it's not related is if isn't being used by the plaintiff.
In a similar vein, people are wondering what Facebook will do with patent infringement suits that do have merit, to which I ask, when's the last time a company defending a patent suit stated the plaintiff's case had merit.
