Not currently, but we do have some plans regarding do-expressions, generators, and JSX. So * might get a meaning, even though not in attributes but children.

>My main point is that the empty tag feels, well, empty and made without a real purpose, in part because it's just so foreign compared to HTML (which is what JSX is based on?) as this kind of thing is never found in HTML.

I think most React users in practice don't touch HTML that often. JSX has quite a few differences with HTML, and we don't really plan to bring it closer to HTML in the future. It is more important to us to make JSX pleasant and convenient to everyday React users than it is to have 1:1 mapping to every HTML concept.

>ReasonML is pretty specialized and much less popular, as well as has a different set of users, than React.

I would argue that people using ReasonML today are the same kind of early adopters (and often even the same people) that started using React four years ago when the ecosystem didn't exist (and shaped that ecosystem). I trust their judgment.

>If you had told me a product in the same category as React, like Angular, Vue, Ember, Ractive, etc., used that syntax, I would be much more receptive

By that logic, we could dismiss React when it came out, because it was not like anything else :-) Give this syntax some time. It felt odd to me at first, after living with it for a few months it feels very natural. I'm sure you'll get to like it eventually too. At that point it might feel odd that other libraries don't provide this syntax.