Microsoft To Open Source Chakra, the JavaScript Engine In Its Edge Browser (windows.com) 114
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft announced today that it will soon open source the "Chakra" JavaScript engine used inside its Edge browser and Internet Explorer. The company plans to publish the code on its GitHub page in January. "Microsoft is calling the version it's open sourcing ChakraCore. This is the complete JavaScript engine—the parser, the interpreter, the just-in-time compiler, and the garbage collector along with the API used to embed the engine into applications (as used in Edge). This will have the same performance and capabilities, including asm.js and SIMD support, as well as cutting-edge support for new ECMAScript 2015 language features like the version found in Microsoft's Windows 10 browser." While it'll be Windows-only code to start, they plan on taking it cross-platform just as they did with .NET. "Microsoft intends to run ChakraCore's development as a proper community project. The company says that Intel and AMD have already expressed interest in contributing, and others are sure to join them."
Curious (Score:2, Interesting)
Does this sort of thing really get non-MS employees to contribute to the project? Or is it just a matter of opening the source so people can poke through it for the sake of their own enlightenment? If I were looking for a open source project to contribute my time and effort, I can't imagine that what amounts to a wholly Microsoft project would pull me in.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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When Microsoft open sourced .NET, they did so under an MIT licence. As far as I am aware, all of the code they have open sourced within the past year or two has been MIT licensed. That shared licensing stuff is a relic of the past.
Re:I have no idea what you are smoking... (Score:5, Informative)
Here is the license to the open source .NET runtime: https://github.com/dotnet/core... [github.com]. And here is the license to the open source framework library: https://github.com/dotnet/core... [github.com].
Both are MIT licenses. The C#/VB compilers are released under an Apache license: https://github.com/dotnet/rosl... [github.com]
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.NET Patient Promise [github.com]
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I typed that on my mobile phone. Damn autocorrect.
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Where is the "Nope. That is exactly what I want." button Slashdot? I really did just want the ;-)
You are aware that you need more than just that? (Score:3)
You are aware that you need more than just that?
Having the overall .NET framework available and all is nice, but you need a lot more than that in order to make a functional cross-platform program. The other components are under the license I originally referenced. Specifically, it's pretty useless without things like the Microsoft HTTP Client Libraries, Microsoft.Bcl.Compression, Microsoft BCL Portability Pack, Microsoft Async, Microsoft BCL Build Components,
In general, this is about as useful as having a
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The other components are under the license I originally referenced. Specifically, it's pretty useless without things like the Microsoft HTTP Client Libraries, Microsoft.Bcl.Compression, Microsoft BCL Portability Pack, Microsoft Async, Microsoft BCL Build Components,
Of course they didn't open source everything at once. That would have been a legal nightmare. Sun didn't open source Java all at once either. They open sourced the core in 2006, and then started the OpenJDK project to open source the toolset and standard libraries. The OpenJDK didn't eliminate the last proprietary code until the very end of 2010. But Sun was a good company, and MS is an evil one right? So we should shit on MS even if they do exactly what Sun did.
Also, having something available as source, doesn't magically port it to your platform.
Microsoft to Open Source More of .NET and Br [zdnet.com]
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That past is the RECENT past and is only one CEO change away from becoming the future present.
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And of course, MS isn't opening it because they are benevolent, but rather because that's what they think is best for business.
And you are deluded enough to think that this isn't the case with Apple and Google?
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And of course, MS isn't opening it because they are benevolent, but rather because that's what they think is best for business.
That's cute. You think any business actually open sources things out of altruism.
Re: Curious (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Why do people care so much about UI in a browser?? (Score:2)
because it's the browser that's closest to Firefox 3.x in UI and functionality (if you customize it.)
I'm asking you because this seems to be a common thing that comes up with FireFox users, they talk about how they like the UI (but not in the new one or whatever).
Do people really spend that much time in the browser UI? I just want a browser UI to be unobtrusive and stay the hell out of the way, i'm quite happy with an address bar and nothing else, 99.9% of the UI i use when using a web browser is inside the viewport.
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Really? Chrome: Ctrl+T, type query, enter. You've just searched the internet. Ctrl+H, type query, enter. You've just searched your history.
So I have no idea what you are talking about... It sounds more like you not understanding the tools than a problem with the tools in question.
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I've said it before, and I'll say it again now: If you're so anxious to use Chrome, you're welcome to use Chrome.
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I'm not interested in flying the Mozilla fanboi flag come Hell or high water.
I'm interested in having a tool that works reliably. Which Firefox did for a long time before the UX-tards started removing features, injecting advertisements, and threatening to toss out the extension API that was offered as a core reason to use it in the first place.
Re: It's another nail in Firefox's coffin, I fear. (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft has a terrible brand recognition now. It doesn't matter howngood improve they are now, they still have many years of bad history. People won't forget it so easily.
The superior product doesn't always win. Just ask apple for Christ's sakes. Apple is an example of what good marketing and good name brand gets for you. They producte inferior product but people still buy in droves. Whereas Microsoft can produxe the best product in the world and the people still won't use based on name. Unfortunate, it
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The superior product doesn't always win. Just ask apple for Christ's sakes. Apple is an example of what good marketing and good name brand gets for you. They producte inferior product but people still buy in droves. Whereas Microsoft can produxe the best product in the world and the people still won't use based on name. Unfortunate, it it will be hard for people to wash the mouth out of the bad taste from precious Microsoft screwing them.
I'm not a Mac user, but for many years I felt that the opposite was true: Apple had the superior product, but everybody used Wintel systems. This was true at least for the 1998-2005 period, after which Apple got into marketing and released their media players. I'm actually surprised to hear that they are the inferior product now, so I must ask: which Apple product are you to comparing to which competing product? Are you considering desktop PCs to be Apple's core competence, or cellular phones, or what?
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But people today don't use Firefox because they like it. [It's] used just because it's the least-worst of all of the shitty options. [...] They'll finally get to use a browser that isn't Chrome, but that's still fast, modern, and efficient.
If Firefox is so bad, why wouldn't people use Chrome? Are you including Chrome in those shitty options you mentioned? Because I haven't seen any browser comparisons that don't put Chrome at the top on Javascript performance, DOM rendering performance, or standards compliance.
Unless Edge comes to Linux / OS X and is much better than Chrome, I don't see how it will change Firefox's market share much. I don't even know why anyone would use Firefox over Chrome anyway, except for developers who like their develo
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https://www.chromium.org/Home [chromium.org]
Chromium is plenty Open Source, where's the problem?
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Not at all, I use a robust GUI known as LXDE (complete with a dock that I made all by my lonesome - I'm not very talented) and everything. It's not in Synaptic either.
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Re:Curious (Score:4, Insightful)
Does this sort of thing really get non-MS employees to contribute to the project?
Getting people to contribute is kind of like starting and running a community. It's a different skill set than writing code.
In their post, Microsoft claims that they want people to contribute, but how they run the community is what will determine if people actually do.
Re:Curious (Score:5, Interesting)
Does this sort of thing really get non-MS employees to contribute to the project? Or is it just a matter of opening the source so people can poke through it for the sake of their own enlightenment? If I were looking for a open source project to contribute my time and effort, I can't imagine that what amounts to a wholly Microsoft project would pull me in.
C# is OSS on GitHub has lots of non-MS contributors. If you add together the non-MS contributors to the compiler, the standard libraries, and the runtime, they add up to about twice that of node.js. See here, particularly the graph on slide 11:
http://www.slideshare.net/Kase... [slideshare.net]
The author of that deck gave me a more recent version of that slide for a talk I gave recently at QCon (I'm on the C# team), on slide 21: https://qconsf.com/system/file... [qconsf.com]
I think the general story is (1) Microsoft came late to the OSS game so we're working extra hard at being extra open to make up for lost time, e.g. the C# standard library team hold their weekly API design review meetings live online and anyone can join in (and the recordings are kept so that GitHub issues can link to the exact moment in the meeting when the issue is discussed). (2) There seriously are a heck of a lot of C# developers out there in the world, lots of them passionate about the language they use day-in and day-out, so contributing comes naturally. (3) C# has a lot of credibility, e.g. amongst folks who think of it as "java done right", e.g. for its introduction of LINQ and more recently async/await, so you do earn serious geek cred by contributing to C#. (4) Lots of people in Microsoft shops have been itching to get into OSS, and previously had a hard time convincing their bosses to let them, but now they can show that Microsoft does it so it must be okay. A weird thought process I know coming from a Linux background, but it's nevertheless how a lot of bosses in a lot of Microsoft shops think.
I believe that TypeScript, another OSS Microsoft project, has a huge number of non-MS contributors too. Will Chakra get the same? No idea! But I wouldn't be surprised.
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Their support of open source has been pretty impressive lately. One thing we use extensively, for example, is Z3 (https://github.com/Z3Prover/z3), a Microsoft-created SMT solver that they recently put under an MIT license, and for which they gladly take contributions. Hard to recognize the "Linux is a cancer" company from back in the day :-)
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We had node.js from Google V8.
So MS-Node.js from ChakraCore.
Microsoft burned their bridges as a developer during the 1990s.
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1) Not thw actual quote.
2) Ballmer quit.
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Take a look at how long it took Sun to open source Java. You can't just open source a major project like it was nothing. You have things like 3rd party code that might be included under a priority license, code cleanup to do, credentials that need to be sanitized, liability to worry about, etc...
What Opera should of done (Score:3)
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I'm not a native speaker, and I obviously make mistakes while writing English.
But for the love of god, how can someone be stupid enough to write "should of" instead of "should have"?
It's not even like "it's" and "its", or "you're" and "your", because the pronunciation really isn't close.
On a related note : http://static.fjcdn.com/pictur... [fjcdn.com]
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its'
Really?
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The pronunciation of "should of" and "should've" is extremely close.
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Would of, could of, might of, must of (Score:2)
Have a lovely day.
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Really nice article. :D
Thank you very much!
Makes me feel like a grandpa ... (Score:2)
... as in "this is not your grandpa's MS anymore".
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... as in "this is not your grandpa's MS anymore".
I'd like to think that, but then Windows 10 popped up a notification telling me to upgrade to Office 365. Seems like the same old abuse-of-monopoly Microsoft to me.
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Where do they get these names? (Score:3)
I know that there's a Linux distro by that name. But how did this become the name of the JavaScript Engine in Edge? The word means 'wheel' in Indian languages. Is this a Nadella import?
this will backfire (Score:3)
microsoft is doing this because they think they can get in on the open source action where you have unpaid people fixing bugs. the problem with this plan is that this is people don't work on something because it's open source, they work on it because they like it and want it to succeed. you can't modify anything but the javascript engine of Edge, so why would you bother helping them? i hope they have a lucrative bug bounty program to go with this because this will make exploits a bit easier to find.
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Because some people are passionate about all the major browsers being able to use new stuff? Every web dev knows the pain of not being able to use feature X because either it wasn't implemented in browser y or is buggy in browser y. Being able to actually help bring up all 3 browsers so that they can begin using feature X is exactly why the bulk of OSS patches get made.
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Being able to actually help bring up all 3 browsers so that they can begin using feature X is exactly why the bulk of OSS patches get made.
if that's the case, you still wont be able to help the Edge browser.
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"microsoft is doing this because they think they can get in on the open source action where you have unpaid people fixing bugs"
And all the others are doing it ... because they're kind?
Global Mother Fucking Spyware? (Score:1)
Does anybody give a fuck what a sellout anti-trust spyware company "open sources"?
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Well, I did. But now that I've read your thought provoking, well researched, and immaculately composed post I do believe you have changed my mind. Your insightful and intelligent argument will sway many, I believe.