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Microsoft To Open Source Chakra, the JavaScript Engine In Its Edge Browser (windows.com)

Posted by Soulskill on from the still-sounds-odd dept.

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."

15 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. Curious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Curious by known_coward_69 · · Score: 2

      same as google or anyone else. when you don't want to spend the cash to develop your language or platform, open source it and let some other sucker do the work for you

    2. Re:Curious by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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."
    3. Re: Curious by Hardhead_7 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      . 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.

    4. Re:Curious by ljw1004 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  2. Re:It's another nail in Firefox's coffin, I fear. by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    I think you have it the other way around. People do use Firefox because they like it, and people are complaining and leaving Firefox because Mozilla keeps changing it away from the browser they like. Nobody has to use Firefox, and pretty much the only people who do use it because it's the browser that's closest to Firefox 3.x in UI and functionality (if you customize it.)

    Edge isn't going to change that. Edge is not Firefox 3.x, it's not meant to be, and it'll probably never look like that. Firefox will probably disappear into irrelevance within the next two years, but that's 100% on Mozilla, and 0% on any open source initiatives Microsoft might have.

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  3. Re: It's another nail in Firefox's coffin, I fear. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  4. What Opera should of done by CrashNBrn · · Score: 2

    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.

  5. Re:It's another nail in Firefox's coffin, I fear. by short · · Score: 2

    I do not use Chrome because it is insecure - it is not Free, I do not have sources for it. I could use Chromium but that is not shipped in Fedora (it is in Fedora COPR repository but there may be some "but" when it is not shipped by default and it is just not easy enough).

  6. Where do they get these names? by unixisc · · Score: 2

    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?

  7. Re:It's another nail in Firefox's coffin, I fear. by fluffernutter · · Score: 2

    I use firefox because it is the least shitty option. I hate it, but I hate internet explorer and chrome even more.

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  8. Re:It's another nail in Firefox's coffin, I fear. by fluffernutter · · Score: 2

    I've tried to use chrome a few times over the years. I always run into websites that it is not quite compatible with. Combine that with the whole Google spying thing, I always come back to Firefox.

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  9. Re:I have no idea what you are smoking... by VertigoAce · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here is the license to the open source .NET runtime: https://github.com/dotnet/core.... And here is the license to the open source framework library: https://github.com/dotnet/core....

    Both are MIT licenses. The C#/VB compilers are released under an Apache license: https://github.com/dotnet/rosl...

  10. this will backfire by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2

    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.
  11. You are aware that you need more than just that? by tlambert · · Score: 2

    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.