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Microsoft and Nokia Adopt OSS JQuery Framework

Posted by timothy on from the ms-could-become-the-largest-open-source-vendor dept.

soliptic writes "The jQuery blog today announced that 'Both Microsoft and Nokia are taking the major step of adopting jQuery as part of their official application development platform.' So the open-source javascript framework will be shipped with Visual Studio and ASP.NET MVC. Microsoft's Scott Hanselman notes: 'It's Open Source, and we'll use it and ship it via its MIT license, unchanged. If there's changes we want, we'll submit a patch just like anyone else.'" There's also a story at eWeek about the decision.

3 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Will they by Ed+Avis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah why not? As long as they release all their code under the MIT licence (which they've said they will do), there is no reason not to embrace and extend. The parent project can choose to incorporate Microsoft's code, or not.

    From the article, Microsoft have said they will contribute patches upstream rather than forking their own version. But as long as you're sure everybody is releasing their code under the same free licence, 'embrace and extend' is not a problem in the free software world. In many cases it can be beneficial.

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    -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
  2. Re:But... by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What he's saying is that although Microsoft will be distributing the JQuery framework as-is, they may decide to use it in a closed-source product, with custom changes that don't get sent upstream. I'm not saying that Microsoft will do that, because I'm not in a position to speak for them, but it would definitely not be outside of their usual MO. Furthermore, parents point is that there is nothing in the MIT license that prevents them from doing this. Whether you agree with the philosophy of the MIT license or not is out of scope and off-topic.

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    My blog
  3. Re:But... by kripkenstein · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Outside of obfuscation, how exactly do you close source a JavaScript library that your browser can access via HTTP? I suppose Microsoft could incorporate it directly into the browser, but that doesn't seem likely.

    "Close" can mean two things here. Yes, the source will remain visible, since its Javascript. So that's one sense of "open". However, it doesn't need to remain open source in the sense of the license. Microsoft could, in theory, add some features and relicense it under proprietary terms; the MIT license allows that. That is, seeing the source doesn't mean it's open source in the licensing sense.

    Happily, Microsoft announced that they won't change the license.