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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?
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.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
. NET is released under the MIT license. Plus, they have a "covenant not to sue" over reimplimenting the API, promising they won't pull a Java. It's more free-as-in-freedom than most open source languages.