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Microsoft To Open Source Chakra, the JavaScript Engine In Its Edge Browser (windows.com)
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."
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.
We had node.js from Google V8.
So MS-Node.js from ChakraCore.
What do you think?
"Open-source is cancer" -- Steve Ballmer
JavaScript or Microsoft?
I don't know if it's intentional or not, but regardless of the motive, this is yet another nail in Firefox's coffin.
I'm not a Microsoft supporter by any means, but when I look at what they've been doing with Edge and Chakra, I'm impressed. They've put together a top-notch product that's continuing to get better and better. The only problem with it so far has been that it runs only on Windows.
Now, if Edge and Charka were to go open source and cross platform in the near future, the consequences for Firefox will be absolutely devastating. Up until now, Firefox has been the only real competitor to Chrome on Linux and FreeBSD, and the only competitor to Chrome and Safari on OS X.
But people today don't use Firefox because they like it. In fact, many people are quite vocal about how much they dislike the direction that Firefox has taken. It has gone from being a liked and respected browser to one that's used just because it's the least-worst of all of the shitty options.
An open source, cross platform version of Edge and Chakra would give Linux, BSD and OS X users the alternative to Firefox that they've wanted for so many years now. They won't have to put up with each release of Firefox getting worse and worse. They won't have to put up with Mozilla treating them like crud. They'll finally get to use a browser that isn't Chrome, but that's still fast, modern, and efficient. Firefox's dwindling share of the market will drop even lower than it already has, to the low single-digits. How does Mozilla expect to swing lucrative search deals if Firefox no longer has enough users to justify such deals?
Instead of doing the sensible thing and improving Firefox by listening to what its few remaining users want, we've seen Mozilla go off on their pathetic Rust/Servo tangent that's going nowhere fast. I think that Rust is a failed programming language, inferior to C++14 in so many ways. In my experience, Servo is also a complete failure. I try it every so often, and I see little progress being made. Meanwhile, we have Microsoft making huge strides forward with Edge and Chakra.
IE was cross platform many years ago, and it did harm the use of Netscape on the non-Windows platforms it supported then. If Edge and Chakra were to go open source and cross platform, we may very well see the same thing happen again, this time with Edge and Charka decimating the carcass of Firefox.
Charka uses the integrated face system to run javascript.
Just Open Source it, I always see news articles about MS planning to Open Source something at some particular time like its some big deal. Just open source the damn thing and be on your way, its just code not some magical thing worthy of a press release.
It's the pre-eminent browser, which in a few more years, will be the mouse click destination of a billion people! Yes, of course, so is Firefox, but Firefox is like those dead and dying -- smelly and foul! Edge is young and FAST - thanks to Chakra!
Well that's kinda awesome. Too bad Opera ASA left their Opera legacy and mail client to rot into obscurity instead of letting the code free.
... as in "this is not your grandpa's MS anymore".
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?
Because people learn how to write by listening to TV.
The contraction "should've" gets turned into "should of" because it sounds similar, and few people care enough to write it correctly, or even notice that it's nonsensical.
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.
When Microsoft open sourced .NET, they did so under an MIT licence.
I have no idea what you are smoking... here is the .NET library license, and it's *DEFINITELY NOT* the MIT license, and it's *definitely* incompatible with the GPLv2 and GPLv3:
http://www.microsoft.com/net/d...
Few people care enough to write it correctly? No, few people take the time to think about what it is they're repeating. Most people are too stupid to care.
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.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Does anybody give a fuck what a sellout anti-trust spyware company "open sources"?
No they don't. The 2% of neckbeard who hate MS aren't exactly important.
Have a lovely day.
Lots of people (most?) like to have quick access to online search. Chrome, IE, FF and edge all provide this. Some of us like to be able so search explicitly our history or explicitly the web. FF is the only browser whose UI enables this, while not sucking like IE. The reason we don't like the UI changes is that we don't care about the rest of the browser, and every change forces us to relearn old tasks. That sucks.
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 C compiler without a libc.
Also, having something available as source, doesn't magically port it to your platform.
So they'll wait for someone else to do it, make vague patent threats to ensure no one uses it, then eventually when people get bold and start building things with it without any of the proprietary APIs, they'll embrace it and use it as an example of how well they work with the open source community?
Yes, I have been known to change tabs, enter URLs, search for things, and add/remove/visit bookmarks, and as a developer I've had to make heavy use of the developer tools (which have been improving in Firefox, admittedly.)
I've also, not necessarily once a day, but maybe a couple times a week done things like enable/disable add-ons and plug-ins, change proxy settings, and so on.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Too bad Opera ASA left their Opera legacy and mail client to rot into obscurity instead of letting the code free.
Even if they released their code nobody would maintain it. There was a story recently on GIMP and all these people bitching about how it is lagging compared to proprietary products but nobody seems to want to contribute. Then there's all this anti-systemd noise yet nobody maintaining the non-systemd codebases from before it was introduced. PGP got to the point of begging for donations to keep it maintained. There are well-documented problems with OpenSSL and OpenSSH due to lack of maintenance resources.
Then you have the open source community. Already in this very story there are the all the anti-MS naysayers whining, you have the abusive chauvinists and the SJW feminists and the culture of exclusion rather than inclusion. It's often not worth the effort, has the open source community actually ever been grateful for a release of code? Just look in these comments and you already see the OSS SJWs moving the goal posts now that MS has released open source code.
Perhaps EEE isn't being applied at the level of individual software projects, but on open source licensing.
1. Release things with MIT/Apache/etc licences.
2. ???
3. Death of GNU-style licences.
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.
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 Bring it to Linux, Max OS. Seriously, why don't you take five seconds to google something before you spew nonsense all over this comments section?
Someone else in this thread mentioned patents. Several parts of .NET have been released under the Apache 2 license, which contains a patent grant. Additionally, a lot of the software is released with a Patent Promise.