Microsoft Open-Sources Its JavaScript Engine Chakra (windows.com) 141
An anonymous reader writes: As promised, Microsoft has open-sourced the core components of Chakra, the company's JavaScript engine used in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer. The project, dubbed ChakraCore, has been released under the MIT License on GitHub. The official blog post reads in part: "The ChakraCore repository provides a fully supported and open-source standalone JavaScript engine, with the same characteristics as the Microsoft Edge’s Chakra engine, to embed in projects, innovate on top of and contribute back to. We will be accepting community contributions and input to ChakraCore. Once the changes from any pull request have been vetted, our goal is to ensure that all changes find their way to be shipped as a part of the JavaScript engine powering Microsoft Edge and the Universal Windows Platform on Windows 10."
"with the same characteristics" (Score:3, Interesting)
"...with the same characteristics..."
So, not the same code, then. That isn't really the intent of open source, now is it?
Re:"with the same characteristics" (Score:4, Informative)
1. It does not expose the bindings to Windows platform
2. Instead of COM based diagnostic APIs, there provide a different set for Open source one.
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"Once the changes from any pull request have been vetted, our goal is to ensure that all changes find their way to be shipped as a part of the JavaScript engine powering Microsoft Edge and the Universal Windows Platform on W
Re:"with the same characteristics" (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that there is much use to this
It's MIT licensed and they're upstreaming patches to make Node.js work with it. They're also working on cross-platform support. Oh, and Microsoft has a history of being a lot better than Google at maintaining stable APIs (and ABIs). V8 has a nasty habit of breaking everything that's not Chromium by changing public APIs that everyone relies on. If this works well and becomes cross platform, I can see a lot of utility in it.
Re:"with the same characteristics" (Score:5, Interesting)
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Node.js modules?
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"...with the same characteristics..."
So, not the same code, then. That isn't really the intent of open source, now is it?
Oh please and OpenJDK with IcedTea gets a free pass right? Same kind of deal and the reason with Java was because Adobe and others owned the patents and IP property of the code and didn't want to share it.
MS like IBM is not the same company it was 15 years ago. It lost it's monopoly and competition made them friendlier. Any corporation whether it is Apple (Boy I am glad they didn't win the pc wars based on what I saw during their comeback ) , or IBM, or even Google is heading will always be evil. It is what
Looks like they are... (Score:1)
...opening their chakra
*puts sunglasses and walks away without looking looking at explosions*
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I am very grateful and appreciative for all of the excellent code they have released as open source.
What? Where is this excellent code? And why are you grateful or appreciative? You can't actually use it, because #itsatrap.
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But that doesn't mean all of the code they released as open source is automatically gar
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It seems to me that a truly enlightened software company would find the right combination of open source and proprietary to optimize business in the long term. If we take the premise that Microsoft is enlightened (to at least some extent, if not truly), then they're trying to find the best combination for them. I'm not sure if that makes them "a complete friend" - probably not. But it also doesn't make them any sort of real enemy.
In simplest form, the business calculus for open source amounts to, "Do we
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But further, I think it's crystal clear that Microsoft is playing nice wit
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But further, I think it's crystal clear that Microsoft is playing nice with open source licenses, the HTML standard, the Javascript/ECMAScript standard, HTTP 2.0, etc... etc... because it doesn't have a sufficient monopoly to force the world into its proprietary technologies.
Not only has the business climate changed since the "bad old days" of the Microsoft monopoly, there's also that little thing about it being run by different people now.
I continue to be fascinated by the fact that so many folks still read E-V-I-L into everything Microsoft does. Are we to conclude that a corporation (or some other entity) can so evil-to-the-core that it can never reform, even if reform is in their best business interest?
BTW, as a member of the FSF, I'm sure you noticed that they used the MIT
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Open source is a million miles better than proprietary, so if you're not willing to use GPL/EPL/MPL or other copyleft but you'll use MIT/BSD/Apache/ISC, that's st
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Maybe this doesn't bother you, because you're satisfied to be a wealthy corporate drone. Me, I don't like it.
Quite satisfied, thank you. In fact, I own a number of corporate stocks (some more wealthy than others...) Heck, I even owned stock for awhile in the evil Corporation-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named. I also work for a wealthy corporation. Oh, and I also run a not-so-wealthy one-man corporation from my home in my spare time.
Man cannot live on toe jam alone.
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But that doesn't mean it's good for the future of humanity for proprietary software to dominate everything. If you want freedom, you need open source software on everything. The only way to keep that open source software from being forked and then replaced by proprietary software is copyleft licensing.
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Doesn't MacOS ultimately derive from the BSD kernel? Meanwhile, the folks who buy Macs running a proprietary OS are perfectly happy, and the folks that run (and still develop) open source BSD are perfectly happy. So, what's wrong with that? And why can't that sort of thing work just as well in cases like Chakra and Microsoft's other recent forays into open source?
I've thought for many years that copyleft was unnecessary because if the benefits of open source are as compelling as purported, there isn't mu
Why is javascript being pushed as generic? (Score:1)
I'm confused as to where the impetus is to have these standalone javascript engines such as Chakra and googles V8 anyway. Javascript is a poor scripting language compared to something like Python and a poor general purpose programming language compared to C++ or Java (Why? Google it). I know a lot of kids these days kick off their coding doing web based stuff, but thats really no reason to try and drag that 2nd rate mishmash of an enviroment out of its niche into other areas of computing such as Databases (
Re:Why is javascript being pushed as generic? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Ah "frameworks". The euphamism for a APIs that are far more bloated & complicated than they need to be.
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Careful with the generalizations. They risk exposing your lack of solid arguments and presenting you as someone who doesn't really - actually - know what you're talking about.
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I've probably had to use more "frameworks" in the last 25 years that you've had hot dinners mate but if it makes you feel better being a typical sneering AC loser then enjoy.
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So you don't have an argument.
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hugs. If only I had mod points today.
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Seconding this - at this stage in the game, JS is here to stay so the emphasis is on improving it rather than replacing it. Too much money is invested in JS right now across the board for the possibility of replacement to be taken seriously - and even if it was replaced, the sunset period would be longer than that of XP...
JS has improved a lot over the past few years, and is set to improve a lot more with the continuing adoption of EcmaScript 6 - thats the best you are going to get Im afraid.
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I adore the response to:
I know people who say Javascript is much improved over what it used to be but I do get the feeling that a lot of these people have never really used any other language in depth.
which includes:
JS has improved a lot over the past few years
Gave me a chuckle.
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That reads suspiciously like the justification why COBOL is still around.
And? Languages linger because the code has value. If your job is in development, a new and better tool makes you more effective. But it's not certain throwing out 30 years of COBOL code makes the business more effective. No matter what happens to Java, C# and Swift you can be sure that in 30 years we'll still be optimizing Javascript to run a billion browser scripts. That makes it a far safer bet than going with Ruby on Rails or whatever the fad of the day is.
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A friend of mine was working at a company that did something with student loans. The software was IBM COBOL chugging away on a small mainframe and doing fine. Then a CIO came in who wanted a COBOL-to-Java conversion on his resume, and it turned out to be a Bad Idea. For one thing, he way underestimated how much work the mainframe was actually doing, and budgeted too few systems to run the Java on.
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ES6 Javascript engines are actually superior to Python in many ways.
The Python scripting engine is actually quite poor. It doesn't even have true multithreading (there is a global lock on all Python threads. V8 and Chakra have no global locks).
Re:Why is javascript being pushed as generic? (Score:5, Informative)
Install base. JavaScript is installed on almost every PC/mobile platform in existence, and has been in some shape or form for nearly a decade. You can't say the same about iOS, Windows, Python etc.
Sun tried to make Java into a universal platform, Adobe came close with Flash, and Microsoft had a go with Silverlight/.NET. None of these have endured in the same way JavaScript has. Why it did is a complex question.
JavaScript isn't as bad as you might think, but does require a lot of discipline (much like C++) to be done well. It definitely shouldn't be the universal language. I consider it really a high level language builder, rather than a high level language in itself. It is actually quite incredible that some newbie can naively bash out decently structured imperative code using it, while an advanced user creates quite well formed functional stuff. But, like C, the downside of this flexibility is that it is extremely easy to shoot yourself in the foot - something that I don't think should be a characteristic of a high level language.
Anyway, the way things are trending in the JavaScript world, eventually most people won't work directly in JavaScript but use derivative languages (such as CoffeeScript is doing now) better suited to their problem domain, so longer term you'll probably have your wish of developing in Python/C++ and then having that compiled to JavaScript. For now though, if you want the best performance (particular on mobile), you need to be developing in JavaScript and have a reasonable understanding of how the interpreter is working for you.
Re:Why is javascript being pushed as generic? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'll tell you why those didn't succeed where javascript did - proprietaryness.
Java wanted to be "pure java" where you only wrote Java. Flash and Silverlight were the same, in all cases you had to drink the kool-aid and become one of "them". Javascript was just so boring and crap that the major players ignored it, but as it was there, developers knocked out little bits of code using it until eventually everyone could program javascript but only a third could do Java, a third could do Flash and a third do Silverlight (you get my point, hopefully - nobody became a developer for all three of those competing proprietary platforms)
And so the impetus for each of the big platforms waned while javascript kept growing.
To replace it would have to be a standards thing, and get implemented in every browser and be recognised as better. Not Dart or Typescript or whatever, which are all failing too.
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I'm confused as to where the impetus is to have these standalone javascript engines such as Chakra and googles V8 anyway. Javascript is a poor scripting language compared to something like Python
Python, where a typical copy from a webpage and paste into the IDE will destroy the code? No, Javascript is fucking brilliant compared to that.
I know a lot of kids these days kick off their coding doing web based stuff, but thats really no reason to try and drag that 2nd rate mishmash of an enviroment out of its niche into other areas of computing such as Databases
I know a lot of kids these days learn to toggle an LED on a Raspberry Pi using orders of magnitudes more resources than necessary by using Python, but that's really no reason to try to use it everywhere even though it makes no fucking sense.
I know people who say Javascript is much improved over what it used to be but I do get the feeling that a lot of these people have never really used any other language in depth.
Maybe they're just living in the really real world, where Javascript is very like other programming languages for your convenien
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Python, where a typical copy from a webpage and paste into the IDE will destroy the code? No, Javascript is fucking brilliant compared to that.
That's a feature meant to catch Stack Overflow coding. :)
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"Maybe they're just living in the really real world"
That would be the "real world" where implementing the full Posix API is a must for most serious backend programs running on unix systems? Which javascript can do can it? Oh, no , it can't....
Perhaps you should try visiting the real world occasionally rather than the small part of it you live in.
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Perhaps you should try visiting the real world occasionally rather than the small part of it you live in.
First you present a false dichotomy, then you're a fucking moron.
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Oh dear, did I hit a nerve? Get over it and answer the fucking point if you can, though given you resorted to Ad Hominem I suspect not.
Q. Does any javascript intepreter implement the full posix API?
A. ?
Because if it can't, for example, do full process control including forking, limit setting and IPC, signal handling, terminal control, shared memory , semaphores, queues, system configuration etc etc then its of limited use in the Real Real World. Say what you like about Python, but it does all of the above.
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Because if it can't, for example, do full process control including forking, limit setting and IPC, signal handling, terminal control, shared memory , semaphores, queues, system configuration etc etc then its of limited use in the Real Real World.
Oh, so because it's of limited use it's not good? A car is not a can opener but I can still drive it to work.
Say what you like about Python, but it does all of the above.
Python is based around a stupid premise, and there are other languages which do all of those things which are not based around that stupid premise.
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"Oh, so because it's of limited use it's not good? A car is not a can opener but I can still drive it to work."
A car that can only be driven down main highways but not suburban streets and back roads would be of limited use.
"Python is based around a stupid premise,"
Your whole argument is based around one. I suggest you go back to your javascript playpen and let the rest of us get on with some real backend development.
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A car that can only be driven down main highways but not suburban streets and back roads would be of limited use.
A car that can only be driven on developed roads is of only limited use, but guess what? That use covers the vast majority of cases.
"Python is based around a stupid premise,"
Your whole argument is based around one.
It is a fact that copying and pasting python code from typical webpages, which use stupid tricks to reformat code snippets, will destroy its control flow. That is not a stupid premise, that is a fact. The idea that program flow should be controlled by indent is the stupid premise. The people who thought they should subject the rest of us to this by using python to create fundam
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It would be a good idea to find a python and lock yourself in a room with it for a few weeks.
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No, it doesn't.
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JS is no picnic, but anyone who prefers Python doesn't really know about good languages anyway.
Chakra: the GNU/Linux distribution .. (Score:1)
The missing bindings are expected. (Score:5, Interesting)
The missing bindings are expected. The browser bindings expose Windows APIs into the JS engine within the browser ("standard + extensions"), and the COM bindings on the debug API not being present are there to make it platform agnostic.
The part that I find really amazing is that they are targeting x86, x64, and ARM binary support, with two levels of JIT, with feedback optimization. That's a pretty cool thing to have out there in the wild, under an MIT license:
https://github.com/Microsoft/C... [github.com]
I think that some of the first contributions need to be buildability support on other platforms, which means CLang/LLVM and GCC support. Ideally, it would handle agnostic conversion from some common representation into both the project build mechanism in Java ("Jenkins"), and Makefiles. Not sure if I'm willing to jump on this, since it would mean a familiarity with both, and I'm not sure they'd accept something like that back (it looks like they specifically picked Jenkins for its cross-platform-ness, even though it adds a Java dependency).
This would enable someone external to Microsoft to run *at least* nightly builds and regression testing for other platforms.
I really have to wonder if it's been thought through, however, to enable people to identify the JavaScript engine, and decide *not* to use the Microsoft specific extensions to the Core platform, so as to keep the things that try to use it portable, or if that's of interest to them. A long time ago, I tried, and failed, to get a common cross-platform ABI adopted, and one of the *key* requirements for it would have been the ability to *turn off* vendor extensions in the runtime, so that you could build cross-platform software targeting it, by causing it to error out when the software used a vendor private API/ABI component.
Without something like that, I fear, it will become an "embrace -- then extend and make incompatible", similar to gcc'isms being incorporated into otherwise portable source code, or the bash extensions to the Bourne shell that resulted in shell scripts actually not being runnable on any shell, but instead only runnable on bash due to bash'isms.
A nice barrier enforcement mechanism that extended up through browser space to enable committing to portability would be nice. Otherwise, when a remote website sent JavaScript content down because of the runtime it though it was hitting, it could include them, unintentionally or no, and non-Microsoft browsers based on the Core implementation would fail to operate.
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The missing bindings are expected. The browser bindings expose Windows APIs into the JS engine within the browser ("standard + extensions"), and the COM bindings on the debug API not being present are there to make it platform agnostic.
Bullshit. They could simply refer to that stuff as extensions. The COM bindings on the debug API not being present are there so that people don't replace their JS engine with the Open Source one, probably because there is spyware included in the real one and they don't want you to compromise that.
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ChakraCore Contributor License Agreement .. (Score:1)
* I am making Submissions in the course of work for my employer (or my employer has intellectual property rights in my Submissions by contract or applicable law). I have permission from my employer to make Submissions and enter into this Agreement on behalf of my employer.
Copyright License. You grant Microsoft, and those who receive the Submission directly or
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If I had a strong belief in the benevolent intentions of MicroSoft then those conditions would be reasonable.
Actually, my opinions don't matter, as I'm not likely to work on a JavaScript compiler, but if they did then I would be strongly disinclined to work on THIS one. Where MicroSoft is concerned I *almost* would consider a GPL license to be sufficient protection.
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A GPL would be completely useless under those terms. Microsoft could take it proprietary without a problem, since they already can distribute what they wrote under any license they like, and with that copyright license they can use anybody else's contributions in the same way.
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Only if there's a copyright assignment provision, which I wasn't even considering granting to MS.
Chakra Core? Why is it not Aksa? (Score:2, Informative)
English and Sanskrit both belong to the Indo-European family of languages. S it is not a surprise the word for such an ancient invention as the axle sounds alike in both English and Sanskrit. But what about wheel? Well, Sanskrit word for wheel Chakra comes from circle, which is a cognate in so many languages. Why English disconnected the word for circle from the word for wheel, I don't
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Why English disconnected the word for circle from the word for wheel, I don't know.
Because [etymonline.com] the English word is derived from a notion of conveyance (which almost always used a wheel/circle) not directly from the root "circle".
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Yes, I think it is. So developers contribute to this "almost the same" Chakra engine, but Microsoft profits for it by using it in W10 and Edge, cause last time I checked those products weren't free.
Indeed, notice the project is called ChakraCore (my emphasis). They open source the core and let people contribute, crowdsourcing the "easy" work while they put their developers on the proprietary add ons outside the core. So they get free work on easy stuff, but the community does not get the proprietary stuff they tack on. It's quite a scam.
MS would likely not release anything GPL or they'd have to open it all up to the public, but this is an example why any free software developers out there should use G
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Also they hold complete control over what is put into this "open source" project. All changes are "vetted" by Microsoft.
Re:It's a trap! (Score:5, Insightful)
As if you can just commit changes directly to Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, PostgreSQL, Android, Firefox, Gnome, KDE etc with no one related to those projects "vetting" them.
Fucking lamest argument against MS doing this...
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Except Microsoft is the only company that has been sentenced for antitrust, monopoly and abuse of dominent position.
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Ahhh trot that old load of bollocks out, as if it makes any difference to this situation.
Got any arguments that are actually worth the name? Being "sentenced" 15 years ago has fuck all to do with them open sourcing a javascript engine today - got any actual decent arguments against them doing that?
I notice you didnt try and argue as to why any of the projects I listed are different in how patches are accepted...
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It doesn't matter how long ago it was. They where sentenced as Microsoft and they still are Microsoft. Microsoft has shown that they are willing to break to law. As an example is the case Microsoft against Sun for the Java runtime that shows that they are prepared to use any illegal tactic to destroy the competition, especially famous is their Embrace, extend and extinguish tactic. So given the history of they company it is no surprise that people have reservations about any "open source" project they have
Re:It's a trap! (Score:4, Insightful)
So you hate MS, why should I give a shit about that? And "you" having reservations about Microsoft and opensource doesnt mean "people" have reservations - I've been around on Slashdot since 2000 and while its a great anti-MS rhetorical slogan, I have yet to see Embrace, Extend and Extinguish in real life - .Net is awesome, and getting more open source by the day, and MS is releasing stuff as open source left right and centre. So tell me, just how long do I have to wait to be "extended" or "extinguished"? Another 5 years? 10? Am I going to die of old age first?
Now, care to actually tell me how MS acting as gatekeeper for their project is any different from any of the other projects I mentioned? You cant, other than point to your hate filled rhetoric? Ho hum.
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Yes I loathe MS because I am an old timer in this industry and I have seen all this crap from Microsoft first hand and been burned by it. Just look at Embrace, extend and extinguish [wikipedia.org] in Wikipedia to get a few real life examples. All of this happened!
.Net is from Microsoft and therefore Microsoft doesn't have to EEE it's own product. Saying .Net is open source is a misnomer. Taking a real life .Net application and moving to a different platform is basically impossible. Everything in .Net is dictated
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"you" having reservations about Microsoft and opensource doesnt mean "people" have reservations
kbg has reservations. I have reservations. Now, "people" have reservations. Thanks for playing!
I have yet to see Embrace, Extend and Extinguish in real life
So you haven't been around for very long then? It took me about 3 seconds to find Examples [wikipedia.org]. See also: Exchange / outlook / email standards (the "extinguish" step failed here, but they gave it a good try), and for something more recent, the whole "open" document format fiasco.
.Net is awesome
This is some strange new usage of the word "awesome" with which I'm not familiar. Or did you misspell "horrific"? Damn autocorrect, eh?
MS is releasing stuff as open source left right and centre
Centr
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Don't misunderstand: Open-sourcing stuff is definitely a step in the right direction. And if they keep it up and demonstrate good faith for 15 years or so I might even begin to trust them. Let's chat in 2030.
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You loathe MS because you're mentally deficient. Carry on.
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You deserve pain and misery for all your days. Unfortunately, this world is not a just world.
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take any .Net project programmed 10 years ago and try to get it to compile in the latest Visual Studio
Done that already. In fact, the code base was from over 13 years ago. Didn't have a problem. I use code from 10+ years ago in the latest version of Visual Studio all the time. What issue do you have?
Taking a real life .Net application and moving to a different platform is basically impossible.
No it isn't, but the project had to be written to be portable in the first place. The same is true of any application written in any language. If you write it so that it depends on libraries only available on X (or you make assumptions that are only true on X), then you can't move it to Y without first usin
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So you haven't been around for very long then? It took me about 3 seconds to find Examples [wikipedia.org].
Well, most of those examples stem from the whole Java thing which happened 20 years ago (1995-1996).
I'm not sure where the issue with Kerbios is/was. Windows 2000 was release in Feb 2000. The RFP's that describe the extension for changing passwords (RFP3244), was also released Feb 2000, nearly at the same time. The NDA then only covered it until the products actual release, hardly a shining example of "extinguish".
All in all, your "examples", some of which I personally disagree with (having lived through
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Let's not get into the copyleft vs. no copyleft argument. The critical question you need to ask about a project is if you could fork it if you wanted. If it's under the MIT license, you can do what you like with the source, provided you keep the license and copyright text.
Microsoft can take any of this and close it up, sure. They could also do that if it were GPLed, as long as they required copyright assignment. In neither case would the license status of the last open version be changed, and people
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Just try to take any .Net project programmed 10 years ago and try to get it to compile in the latest Visual Studio, I can guarantee you will run into major problems
Thought I'd try this. Grabbed our .NET source code CVS archive from 2003. Opened the solution in VS2015, got a dialog telling me it was doing a one way upgrade. Clicked ok. Rebuilt, ran!
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All in all, your "examples", some of which I personally disagree with (having lived through that time) are from 13-20 years ago, 2 CEO's ago, and aren't relevant. Microsoft isn't the same as it was back then, I suspect less than 2% of the workforce that is there now is still there (could be wrong, I just pulled that number out of the air), but the idea stands the same. Not many employees remain that were there are that time, and it's gone under two different CEO's since then.
But it is still the same company. Where any of the CEO involved in this charged with anything? No because the people themselves are not being charged it is the company. Which one is it? Either the individuals are to blame or the company as a whole is to blame. If Microsoft doesn't want to be associated with the bad things they have done in the past, they should disband the company and create a new one with a different name. Now you say: "But the Microsoft name is a valuable asset". Yes but then you also hav
Re: It's a trap! (Score:2)
I blame Bill Gates. It was under his direction these things happened. He either set forth the direction or was aware and complicit in all of those examples.
It is also partially the fault of those under him who didn't push back, but that's easy to say when it's not your job, your career on the line and you (may) have a wife (or husband) at home with kids who like to eat.
The company name means nothing, or are you suggesting that if they dissolved the company and created a new company with the same people, sam
Re: It's a trap! (Score:2)
And I would say you are a paid shill for one of Microsoft's competitors, hiding behind an anonymous account. Why the need to be anonymous on a fairly anti-MS forum if not? We've all seen this before and we won't fall for it again. If you have something to rebut, then do so, but blanket unfounded statements won't cut it.
Re: It's a trap! (Score:1)
Re: It's a trap! (Score:2)
You only have 4 browsers installed on your iOS device if they all use the same WebKit engine supplied by Apple, or you've jail broken the device.
Of course, I also have 4 browsers installed on my Windows PC, and didn't have to jail break it to do so.
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I don't care much for Microsoft myself. I remember the software bundling. Before that I remember forcing whitebox sellers to license Windows or DOS for every system sold even if that system shipped with 4.4BSD, SCO Unix, or OS/2. The honest, factual truth of the situation though is that Google has had anticompetitive practices trouble in the courts much more recently than has Microsoft.
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It doesn't matter how long ago it was. They where sentenced as Microsoft and they still are Microsoft. Microsoft has shown that they are willing to break to law. As an example is the case Microsoft against Sun for the Java runtime that shows that they are prepared to use any illegal tactic to destroy the competition, especially famous is their Embrace, extend and extinguish tactic. So given the history of they company it is no surprise that people have reservations about any "open source" project they have and if this Chakra project becomes successful I think we don't have to wait to long before the extend and extinguish part comes along.
They released the code under an MIT license. If you don't like the direction they're going with it fork it and maintain it yourself. This isn't the old days (the 90s) when they would make a bastardized version of something and attempt to dominate the market with it (look at their Kerberos implementation for one of the last examples of this).
I'm always wary of Microsoft and I don't really use their software, but the reality is when they release code under an open source license they're doing the right thin
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That's because other organizations have gotten smarter about this, like Google: http://news.yahoo.com/revolvin... [yahoo.com]
There are things that Microsoft didn't do back then (ie, lobby heavily) that other organizations do HEAVILY now (even RedHat, surprise surprise) that landed them in a lot of hot water. The idea that Google is a fair and balanced organization that wouldn't have antitrust issues for promoting their own services is ridiculous if you look at it from the lens of what happened to Microsoft a decade ago
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It would be good if Microsoft sent someone to rip off your face and feed it to a passing hobo. Only then will MS have done a true and lasting favor for humanity. Until then, I'll take what I can get.
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Only a person with no valid arguments and no intellect will resort to threats and other childish arguments.
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Looks like the anti-MS brigade is out in force - who gives a fuck that this isnt any different to the other projects I highlight, its MS and therefor bad.
Ted Cruz Wikipedia (Score:1)
As if you can just commit changes directly to Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, PostgreSQL, Android, Firefox, Gnome, KDE etc with no one related to those projects "vetting" them.
Wait, so it's easier to edit the Wikipedia Page of Ted Cruz [wikipedia.org] to explain his Canadian name was "Cruz'); -- DROP TABLE DONORS" than it is to edit the MySQL source?
Almost as if mysql were more important than who gets elected President.
"Little Teddy Tables," we call him.
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Uh, you are forgetting the ability to GPL it and require copyright assignment for patches submitted to the master branch. GPLing doesnt affect MS at all if they are the ones to do it, they dont have to force GPL use internally nor "open it all up to the public", as they are the copyright holders and can do what they like with it.
If you wanted to fork it and run with your own fork, rather than submitting patches back, thats fine but you would be doing the leg work to kep the fork in sync as and when the orig
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If it is MIT/BSD, companies can pull things like this.
As the creator and owner of the code, MS can do this even with GPL. They don't have to "license" the code that they use on their own projects.
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They appear to be copying the business model of the 'free naughty video' sites, but with software instead.
Re:It's a trap! (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact one could argue there is pretty much zero difference between MSFT and Google now, as both give away their OS and then proceed to datamine the shit out of you while tying everything to their services...hmm...where have I seen that before? Why I just don't know where I could have seen such a thing.
The difference is that so long as I pick some hardware that works, I can run Android-x86 on a PC without being spied on by Google, but no matter what I do, I cannot run Windows 10 on a PC without being spied on by Microsoft, even when they claim they are not spying because you have turned off the options for the spying. I can do the same with my phone. I can opt out of Google services by getting my distribution elsewhere, but I can't opt out of Microsoft spyware because there's only one source for Windows, and it is tainted. I can also get an OSS version of their web browser, but you cannot get an OSS version of Aieeee! So in fact, the situation is completely different, and as a Microsoft whore you are shilling for them in order to make yourself look less unscrupulous. Your self-serving effort has been noted, and sneered at. And, of course, fellated by other Microsoft shills, with modpoints.
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Yes, I think it is. So developers contribute to this "almost the same" Chakra engine, but Microsoft profits for it by using it in W10 and Edge, cause last time I checked those products weren't free.
Oh please.
MS is not the scary giant of the 1990s anymore and lost to Google. So they are now nice guys due to market forces. IBM was just as evil and now are open source friendly and a big contributor.
The intentions are MS wants more node.JS on Windows and feels uncomfortable with Google's monopoly with Chrome V8.
This is a good thing as a monopoly is bad regardless of whether you feel Google is cool and MS is not. Node.JS is mentioned and MS wants it on Chakra and if their JIT is better as it gets improved
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Embrace, extend, realize people are doing it for free and cancel the extinguish phase just to let the cash roll in from the work of others.