Microsoft Brings ChakraCore to Linux and OS X (cio.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a columnist at CIO:
A few days ago I wrote about Microsoft's revival of Skype for Linux. I called it "a big deal" -- less because of Skype itself and more because it signified Microsoft's recognition that Linux is a platform worth supporting... Now the company has done it again. At Node Summit this week, Microsoft announced the availability of ChakraCore for Linux. ChakraCore is the core part of the Chakra JavaScript engine that powers Microsoft Edge and Universal Windows Platform. With this move, Microsoft is putting one of its core technologies on a competing platform. This, more than any other Linux-friendly move the company has made, is a clear departure from the Microsoft of Gates and Ballmer that used its technologies to lock users into Windows...
While Ubuntu is the primary Linux distribution that Microsoft is using to showcase its ChakraCore technologies, the company said that the support should easily translate to other modern Linux distributions.
Microsoft's blog post says the experimental implementation runs not only on x64 Linux but also on OS X.
While Ubuntu is the primary Linux distribution that Microsoft is using to showcase its ChakraCore technologies, the company said that the support should easily translate to other modern Linux distributions.
Microsoft's blog post says the experimental implementation runs not only on x64 Linux but also on OS X.
Microsoft sees themselves as less and less of an OS company, and more of a business services company, especially with the cloud. Windows is only a small portion of Microsoft revenue now, so they don't feel such a need to support it. It's possible that within the next decade, they may become to view it as a cost center, rather than a profit center.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Then I wonder, what about the Skype application?
Why is it so hard to bring that one up to speed on Linux? I mean, if you really wanted to support Linux?
An alternative could be the Line application?
http://line.me/en/
It is for now only supported on these mobile platforms, and then Windows and Mac: (unfortunately not on MeeGo or Ubuntu Touch, which I have)
iPhone, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, and Nokia
If we could could get them to support wider, then Microsoft could possibly also be enticed to support wider, and more honest on Linux?!
For those who don't know, ChakraCore is open source; the code is on GitHub, under the MIT license.
https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore
by Cyphase ( 907627 )
Before Microsoft got their hands on Skype, the service was configured to use a central server to determine if your desired counter-party was on line, then the two end-points went through a handshake and all remaining communications were point-to-point.
After Microsoft got their hands on Skype, the initial call setup used a central server - and then the entire remainder of the conversation remains similarly routed through that central server, thereby allowing Microsoft to record the entire conversation.
Skype doesn't generate revenue, which means that the initial purchase was a loss-leader. Microsoft weren't trying to bring their own competition to market. There is nothing in the technology that they needed or wanted for their own business strategy. In other words, it's worth being very sceptical of Skype.
So why would they want to turn their attention back to the Linux client? Is it because the "bad guys" are using Linux and Microsoft want to remain in the middle of point-to-point conversations?
I'm sure that Skype is a very handy piece of software when you want to keep in touch with relatives who are miles away, but there are just too many inexplicable decisions being taken with it... What's that old saying: when something looks too good to be true, it probably is.
It was a Microsoft program called WISE and licensed to Bristol, Insignia, MainSoft and Locus( https://goo.gl/nrk4ML ). It allowed these vendors to build libraries for UNIX which let Win32 sources be built on UNIX systems. Lots of UNIX app developers porting UNIX apps to Windows since they could sell their apps for both Windows and UNIX. Only one problem, Microsoft pulled the rug out from under them all( save one ) and left all those UNIX software vendors with no path for their UNIX customers but moving to Microsoft Windows. They more than quadrupled the WISE program cost and only one of the vendors could afford to pay it. The one vendor who could still pay the licensing fee was also the one vendor Microsoft hired to port Internet Explorer to Sun Solaris.
So unless every single bit of this ChakraCore stuff is open source and under a BSD or MIT license(ie loose) then stay away, far far away. IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Yeah....its sadly a lot worse than under Ballmer, because you didn't see the Ballmernator packing their flagship with spyware that uses tactics taken straight from malware vendors like hardcoding IPs to get around HOSTS blocking.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Maybe if MS contributed to something worthwhile like Wine instead of offering tokens like a sub-par JavaScript engine it would be viewed as a genuine gesture of goodwill.
Which is a good way to describe Edge.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Have you actually used Edge? It and it's JS component are utter crap. Why would anyone want to run their JS variant?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Start the timer. Apple becomes a hardware-only company, running mostly microsoft software. One decade or two?
real work. But for some reason, I should want to use their libraries on a system that actually is already useful for real work?
Really must be something in the water. Gnome3, Wayland, systemd, Trump, and Microsoft on Linux?
smells like a trojan_horse, after years of being belligerent towards Linux i can not trust microsoft to be honest, look at the mess windows 10 is when it comes to privacy and lack of being open to users,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing