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."

Comments

Curious

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Curious

[ljw1004]

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.

C# is OSS on GitHub has lots of non-MS contributors. If you add together the non-MS contributors to the compiler, the standard libraries, and the runtime, they add up to about twice that of node.js. See here, particularly the graph on slide 11:
http://www.slideshare.net/Kase...

The author of that deck gave me a more recent version of that slide for a talk I gave recently at QCon (I'm on the C# team), on slide 21: https://qconsf.com/system/file...

I think the general story is (1) Microsoft came late to the OSS game so we're working extra hard at being extra open to make up for lost time, e.g. the C# standard library team hold their weekly API design review meetings live online and anyone can join in (and the recordings are kept so that GitHub issues can link to the exact moment in the meeting when the issue is discussed). (2) There seriously are a heck of a lot of C# developers out there in the world, lots of them passionate about the language they use day-in and day-out, so contributing comes naturally. (3) C# has a lot of credibility, e.g. amongst folks who think of it as "java done right", e.g. for its introduction of LINQ and more recently async/await, so you do earn serious geek cred by contributing to C#. (4) Lots of people in Microsoft shops have been itching to get into OSS, and previously had a hard time convincing their bosses to let them, but now they can show that Microsoft does it so it must be okay. A weird thought process I know coming from a Linux background, but it's nevertheless how a lot of bosses in a lot of Microsoft shops think.

I believe that TypeScript, another OSS Microsoft project, has a huge number of non-MS contributors too. Will Chakra get the same? No idea! But I wouldn't be surprised.

Re: It's another nail in Firefox's coffin, I fear.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has a terrible brand recognition now. It doesn't matter howngood improve they are now, they still have many years of bad history. People won't forget it so easily.

The superior product doesn't always win. Just ask apple for Christ's sakes. Apple is an example of what good marketing and good name brand gets for you. They producte inferior product but people still buy in droves. Whereas Microsoft can produxe the best product in the world and the people still won't use based on name. Unfortunate, it it will be hard for people to wash the mouth out of the bad taste from precious Microsoft screwing them.