Microsoft and Nokia Adopt OSS JQuery Framework

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.

Comments

Just makes sense...

[Max Romantschuk]

Javascript frameworks deal with the major hurdles of modern web design: Abstracting browser differences, and avoiding reinventing the wheel with the kind of AJAXy effects that are increasingly more common these days.

I wonder how this will affect Prototype. It's always had different design goals than jQuery, but will this diminish it's popularity?

Also, will the jQuery API eventually be integrated into the browser instead of being a huge JS blob for every page?

Re:Just makes sense...

[VGPowerlord]

Also, will the jQuery API eventually be integrated into the browser instead of being a huge JS blob for every page?

I imagine not, since it would make upgrading a major pain. As long as the site controls which version of jQuery you have, they can opt in to the latest and greatest version without having to wait for the browser manufacturers.

Re:Just makes sense...

[Bogtha]

jQuery is entirely contained within its own namespace. Multiple versions of jQuery can coexist on the same page, so upgrades wouldn't be a problem, sites could just include the latest version if the version shipped with browsers wasn't suitable.

Re:Will they

[Ed Avis]

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.

But...

[Junta]

MIT license is not a source-required license. Companies may sell, close it up, whatever they wish so long as they continue to give credit to the original product.

Re:But...

[StrawberryFrog]

MIT license is not a source-required license. Companies may sell, close it up, whatever they wish so long as they continue to give credit to the original product.

And is that relevant? This issue has been addressed:

Scott Guthrie says:
"We will distribute the jQuery JavaScript library as-is, and will not be forking or changing the source from the main jQuery branch."

The Scott Hanselman says:
"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."

Re:But...

[dwarfking]

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.

Re:But...

[morgan_greywolf]

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.

Re:But...

[wilder_card]

"Whether you agree with the philosophy of the MIT license or not is out of scope and off-topic."
In other words: It's time to start a flame war! Right here! Right now!

Re:But...

[kripkenstein]

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.

Re:Will they

[tcr]

Well.... a big part of its popularity is that it's a lightweight library, so maybe better if they don't contribute to it... :-)

Re:Will they

[Phil John]

jQuery is designed specifically to be extended, by the programming of plugins. Have a look at their plugin repository.

I find it highly unlikely that Microsoft would require anything adding to the jQuery core that couldn't be better implemented with a plugin.

Re:pity JS is crap to start with

[tobiasly]

it's slow, buggy, and prone to being abused. why are we still using it?

Slow? Not with the next generation of JIT JavaScript compilers coming up in Firefox 3.1, Google Chrome, and WebKit. And I'm sure IE will get there someday. Buggy? Not sure what you even mean by that... particular implementations may be buggy, but a programming language cannot itself be buggy. Prone to being abused? Which language isn't?

Re:Will they fix it?

[Chaos Incarnate]

Said Googling does indeed show that your memory is playing a trick on you; it's Prototype that you're thinking of.

Re:Coincidentally

[thelawal]

This may provide a reason why the chose jQuery over prototype: http://blog.creonfx.com/javascript/dojo-vs-jquery-vs-mootools-vs-prototype-performance-comparison

Re:Will they

[Jellybob]

jQuery is the core library, with widgets usually being distributed as independent packages, so it makes complete sense for them to do it this way.

jQuery's aim isn't to be the source for calendar and date-picker widgets, it's to provide a solid base to build those things on.

Re:pity JS is crap to start with

[Sancho]

The programming language itself has many, many problems.

• It's a fully functional language which uses a syntax almost identical to C.
• It implements the awful === operator.
• Boolean values can be True, False, Undefined, or Null (this is a side effect of being weakly typed)
• It tries to be easy to program by assuming end-of-statement operators (';') at certain places if the function wouldn't otherwise parse. This makes it incredibly difficult to debug. I truly consider this a bug in the design.
• It's a weakly typed language with a strong understanding of type. By this, I mean that any variable is actually a reference which can hold values of any type (though they're all just objects anyway.) This isn't so much a bug as a design decision, but it's important for understanding the below--
• null.typeof returns 'object'. So does Array.typeof. That's just ... dumb.
• The object which 'this' references has several different meanings depending upon the context.

So those are only a few of the issues. It feels like it's trying to be several different languages all at once. Coupled with the issues above (particularly the inconsistent use of 'this' and the implicit semi-colons), well frankly, if any design could be considered buggy, I'd say that it's Javascript's.

Re:pity JS is crap to start with

[lwsimon]

You're basically arguing that since JS is not the language YOU want, its buggy. JS has its oddities, to be sure, but it is not "buggy" - its just very different. It also suffers from the same thing as PHP -- its easy to get into, but hard to master - so you get hundreds of thousands of shitty developers out there, and a handful of good ones. The shitty ones give the language a bad name, while the good ones build things like Gmail.

This is just for cred

[LeedsSideStreets]

Sure, Microsoft has taken stuff that is under a liberal license in order to not have to write it themselves - the BSD TCP/IP stack from back in the day comes to mind.

But I believe this is something different. Even though this probably gives them some code they don't have to write, this is just to use a popular and growing JavaScript library to give ASP.NET MVC some much needed street cred, especially among open source leaning developers.

Though jQuery is better as a general JavaScript library than anything they've come up with, they've had no trouble writing this stuff for themselves before. This is a non-Microsoft developer focused thing that says: "We're cool! jQuery is in the box!" and tries to attract people to their stack by allowing them to leverage their skills with a library they've used elsewhere instead of some MS-only library.