17 ms·

Even if I'm in danger of stating the obvious, but MS really changed its approach to software. And it is incredibly great having competition in the JS engine ma

Even if I'm in danger of stating the obvious, but MS really changed its approach to software. And it is incredibly great having competition in the JS engine market.

creshal 11y ago
Aka, Microsoft is again in the "embrace" stage of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. (Even if its current management has the noblest intentions, who knows how it'll be in two or three years?)
- umanwizard 11y ago
  Do you have anything to back this up other than it being your knee-jerk reaction? Microsoft's entire leadership has turned over and it's easy to see that their culture is very different from the days you're talking about. Also, they don't have a monopoly on nearly anything and certainly not on Javascript engines. They couldn't move to the "Extend, Extinguish" phases even if they wanted to.
  - jfoutz 11y ago
    Not saying i agree, but we consider history for every decision made. Want to loan someone money? consider their credit rating. Want to hire someone? consider their employment record. Microsoft has a long history of not being so nice when they have an advantage. How much of that is leadership driven, and how much is built into the corporate culture and structure? It's knee-jerk, but it's not crazy to think about.
    - smt88 11y ago
      > Want to loan someone money? consider their credit rating. Want to hire someone? consider their employment record. That's a single person. Microsoft is many thousands of people, and the most important decision makers have changed. In your analogy, you're considering whether to loan money to an almost completely different person.
      - sqeaky 11y ago
        Those same decision frequently had hiring and promotion authority. How different are these new people? Are they someone the old decision makers promoted minutes before leaving or are they fresh new hires? Chances are there is a complex mix and at least some of microsoft's behavior has changed and some will remain the same.
        smt88 11y ago
        > some of microsoft's behavior has changed and some will remain the same That's the exact argument I was making. The analogy doesn't work because this is, literally, a new Microsoft. It has new leadership. You can't use the past as a benchmark for how this company will behave because no one really knows what parts of the company's behavior and culture have changed and what parts haven't.
  - JupiterMoon 11y ago
    > Also, they don't have a monopoly on nearly anything They didn't have a monopoly on spreedsheets or word processors in the early 90s either..
  - baldfat 11y ago
    Even at the MOST EVIL Time of Microsoft some parts of Microsoft were very PRO Open Source even while they said "Linux is Cancer." Big Corporations can have mixed messages. Apple (My most hated company in Tech has also been very good to Open Source with some projects)
    - fapjacks 11y ago
      I'm genuinely curious which projects you are thinking of when you mention Apple. Shedding GPLv3 and refusing to (for example) update Bash because they do not want to use anything licensed under GPLv3 is pretty.... I dunno, I'm just curious what projects you're thinking of when you say that. The walls of that garden are pretty high.
      - umanwizard 11y ago
        Swift comes to mind.
        fapjacks 11y ago
        Oh, you mean the language Apple created to make their fucking painful app development process easier?
        umanwizard 11y ago
        Chill out. Of course they made it to benefit themselves in some way. They are not a charity. The point is, they released it as open-source, which is what we are talking about in this thread.
      - creshal 11y ago
        Or Samba. When given the choice to abide by the GPL and open source their Samba changes, or to drop everything; they did the latter and wrote their own SMB implementation. That was three or four OSX releases ago and it's still buggy as hell. The only one who lost here are Apple's paying customers.
  - creshal 11y ago
    > Microsoft's entire leadership has turned over and it's easy to see that their culture is very different from the days you're talking about. Yes. They made a 180° turn already. Who says they won't do another? Customer lock-in isn't Bill Gates' idea. It's a very tempting strategy that you can find virtually everywhere where companies think it'll gain them money.
- Someone1234 11y ago
  It is licensed under MIT. Good luck with that third step...
  - krisdol 11y ago
    Wouldn't it be far easier with MIT than GPL? The BSD license sure did little to keep the open source roots of Mac OS thriving.
    - Someone1234 11y ago
      It could help Microsoft close source THEIR implementation later down the line, but it doesn't help them "extinguish" it completely, particularly if third parties wish to maintain it. MIT makes it easy to fork and relatively easy to re-license.
      - reitanqild 11y ago
        IANAL but AFAIK as long as they are the sole owner and contributor or has agreements in place with everyone the GPL doesn't protect us against going closed in future releases. What it does secure is you right to fork the last open source version. Then again, so does BSD, MIT and ASL - and under better terms for everyone else.
        mikekchar 11y ago
        The copyright holder can license a work under any license at any time. Although you can obviously issue an exclusive license for example, in most countries you can not simply dissolve the copyright (there is no concept of assigning something to the public domain). So practically, there is no way to write a license that stops the copyright holder from issuing a new and different license. What the GPL does is forbid anyone who is not the copyright holder from changing the license. If you make a derived work from something and wish to use the GPL as the means for allowing you to make that derived work, then you must use the GPL. The "better terms" that more permissive licenses give you is the ability to change the license when you make a derived work. Of course someone can fork the original open source version, but this is only useful if that person: 1) knows about it 2) has access to it 3) can build and install it for their platform. In many cases, more permissive licenses are preferred because vendors know that they can provide digital locks on the platforms that stop people from deploying free (as in freedom) versions. They wish to get the benefit of open source development, but still lock their users out of certain functionality. Permissive licenses are useful, but they are not automatically better for everyone in every circumstance. Certainly I have a lot of useless bricks that used to be useful consumer electronics because my vendor doesn't let me upgrade them. Strangely the best piece of consumer hardware I ever bought was a bicycle navigation unit from Sony. GPL from top to bottom and they even gave you instructions on how to rebuild it and deploy it. Does it matter? It certainly does to me. YMMV.
nly 11y ago
Three existing production-ready open source engines + other embedded options wasn't already "competition"? It's nice to see but, as far as competition within OSS is concerned, it's about 7-8 years too late. MS will no doubt, at some point, release something like Node.js based on this engine. If they do it'll be widely lauded, but you can barely say they're even a "fast follower" here when they're this slow.
- nailer 11y ago
  Chakra does better than most of its competition on ES6 support: http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/ http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/ (I use v8 and javascriptcore all day but I still appreciate it)
  - nly 11y ago
    Temporarily perhaps. Most of the gains look to have happened within the long IE11 to Edge 12 release cycle. Firefox 45 looks like it'll leap ahead again, and they're on a 6 week release cycle... I'm not disputing MS have made impressive efforts. I've just yet to see anything from them that would make me put long-term stock in their open source commitments.
    - hirsin 11y ago
      Chakra has been well ahead of the other browsers for >1 year now. That lead has been declining (as there's only so much of 100% you can implement), but kangax has always shown it to be ahead.
- simonw 11y ago
  "MS will no doubt, at some point, release something like Node.js based on this engine" https://github.com/Microsoft/node https://github.com/Microsoft/node - "This project enables Node.js to optionally use the Chakra JavaScript engine."
jrcii 11y ago
> MS really changed its approach to software Their open-source friendliness has unfortunately coincided with a decline of their respect for user privacy and choice (Windows 10). I find the "New Microsoft" bittersweet.
- DoubleMalt 11y ago
  While this is true, only open source makes choice and privacy even possible. They are obviously trying to reinvent themselves partly in the image of Google, whose motto "Don't be evil" also sounds very hollow nowadays. But I shudder when I think of a world where Google is built upon closed software. [To clarify: I know that Google does not open most of their software. However, with their reliance on open source software they were a big driver for the legitimacy of the movement]
  - Arkanosis 11y ago
    Well, actually, most of the issues I've with Google are related with some of their closed software. Which makes me agree very hard with your first point, btw.
- wslh 11y ago
  I don't really like the user privacy approach on Windows 10 but I wonder if they will change that approach soon or someone else (third party) will came up with a tool to automatically handle this issue.
  - somebehemoth 11y ago
    I found this tool in another HN discussion about this Win 10 privacy. I don't know if this tool works to solve the entire problem: https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking/ https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking/. If anyone can vouch for this tool's effectiveness I would like to know.
    - XzetaU8 11y ago
      http://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/14/comparison-of-windows-10-privacy-tools/ http://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/14/comparison-of-windows-10-pr...
CrowFly 11y ago
I switched back to Windows 10 as my primary desktop and laptops OS after years of running Mac -- especially on laptops. We do a lot of high-end GPU stuff here, and Apple doesn't make any hardware that supports multiple high-end NVIDIA cards in any practical way. And no Apple monitor does 100% AppleRGB or any of the cinema color spaces, so we always needed third party monitors when doing color work. Windows 10 is as nice and stable as Mac OS used to be (before Steve Jobs died).

Even if I'm in danger of stating the obvious, but MS really changed its approach to software. And it is incredibly great having competition in the JS engine market.

creshal 11y ago

Aka, Microsoft is again in the "embrace" stage of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. (Even if its current management has the noblest intentions, who knows how it'll be in two or three years?)

umanwizard 11y ago
Do you have anything to back this up other than it being your knee-jerk reaction? Microsoft's entire leadership has turned over and it's easy to see that their culture is very different from the days you're talking about. Also, they don't have a monopoly on nearly anything and certainly not on Javascript engines. They couldn't move to the "Extend, Extinguish" phases even if they wanted to.
- jfoutz 11y ago
  Not saying i agree, but we consider history for every decision made. Want to loan someone money? consider their credit rating. Want to hire someone? consider their employment record. Microsoft has a long history of not being so nice when they have an advantage. How much of that is leadership driven, and how much is built into the corporate culture and structure? It's knee-jerk, but it's not crazy to think about.
  - smt88 11y ago
    > Want to loan someone money? consider their credit rating. Want to hire someone? consider their employment record. That's a single person. Microsoft is many thousands of people, and the most important decision makers have changed. In your analogy, you're considering whether to loan money to an almost completely different person.
    - sqeaky 11y ago
      Those same decision frequently had hiring and promotion authority. How different are these new people? Are they someone the old decision makers promoted minutes before leaving or are they fresh new hires? Chances are there is a complex mix and at least some of microsoft's behavior has changed and some will remain the same.
      - smt88 11y ago
        > some of microsoft's behavior has changed and some will remain the same That's the exact argument I was making. The analogy doesn't work because this is, literally, a new Microsoft. It has new leadership. You can't use the past as a benchmark for how this company will behave because no one really knows what parts of the company's behavior and culture have changed and what parts haven't.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  > Also, they don't have a monopoly on nearly anything They didn't have a monopoly on spreedsheets or word processors in the early 90s either..
- baldfat 11y ago
  Even at the MOST EVIL Time of Microsoft some parts of Microsoft were very PRO Open Source even while they said "Linux is Cancer." Big Corporations can have mixed messages. Apple (My most hated company in Tech has also been very good to Open Source with some projects)
  - fapjacks 11y ago
    I'm genuinely curious which projects you are thinking of when you mention Apple. Shedding GPLv3 and refusing to (for example) update Bash because they do not want to use anything licensed under GPLv3 is pretty.... I dunno, I'm just curious what projects you're thinking of when you say that. The walls of that garden are pretty high.
    - umanwizard 11y ago
      Swift comes to mind.
      - fapjacks 11y ago
        Oh, you mean the language Apple created to make their fucking painful app development process easier?
        umanwizard 11y ago
        Chill out. Of course they made it to benefit themselves in some way. They are not a charity. The point is, they released it as open-source, which is what we are talking about in this thread.
    - creshal 11y ago
      Or Samba. When given the choice to abide by the GPL and open source their Samba changes, or to drop everything; they did the latter and wrote their own SMB implementation. That was three or four OSX releases ago and it's still buggy as hell. The only one who lost here are Apple's paying customers.
- creshal 11y ago
  > Microsoft's entire leadership has turned over and it's easy to see that their culture is very different from the days you're talking about. Yes. They made a 180° turn already. Who says they won't do another? Customer lock-in isn't Bill Gates' idea. It's a very tempting strategy that you can find virtually everywhere where companies think it'll gain them money.
Someone1234 11y ago
It is licensed under MIT. Good luck with that third step...
- krisdol 11y ago
  Wouldn't it be far easier with MIT than GPL? The BSD license sure did little to keep the open source roots of Mac OS thriving.
  - Someone1234 11y ago
    It could help Microsoft close source THEIR implementation later down the line, but it doesn't help them "extinguish" it completely, particularly if third parties wish to maintain it. MIT makes it easy to fork and relatively easy to re-license.
    - reitanqild 11y ago
      IANAL but AFAIK as long as they are the sole owner and contributor or has agreements in place with everyone the GPL doesn't protect us against going closed in future releases. What it does secure is you right to fork the last open source version. Then again, so does BSD, MIT and ASL - and under better terms for everyone else.
      - mikekchar 11y ago
        The copyright holder can license a work under any license at any time. Although you can obviously issue an exclusive license for example, in most countries you can not simply dissolve the copyright (there is no concept of assigning something to the public domain). So practically, there is no way to write a license that stops the copyright holder from issuing a new and different license. What the GPL does is forbid anyone who is not the copyright holder from changing the license. If you make a derived work from something and wish to use the GPL as the means for allowing you to make that derived work, then you must use the GPL. The "better terms" that more permissive licenses give you is the ability to change the license when you make a derived work. Of course someone can fork the original open source version, but this is only useful if that person: 1) knows about it 2) has access to it 3) can build and install it for their platform. In many cases, more permissive licenses are preferred because vendors know that they can provide digital locks on the platforms that stop people from deploying free (as in freedom) versions. They wish to get the benefit of open source development, but still lock their users out of certain functionality. Permissive licenses are useful, but they are not automatically better for everyone in every circumstance. Certainly I have a lot of useless bricks that used to be useful consumer electronics because my vendor doesn't let me upgrade them. Strangely the best piece of consumer hardware I ever bought was a bicycle navigation unit from Sony. GPL from top to bottom and they even gave you instructions on how to rebuild it and deploy it. Does it matter? It certainly does to me. YMMV.

nly 11y ago

Three existing production-ready open source engines + other embedded options wasn't already "competition"? It's nice to see but, as far as competition within OSS is concerned, it's about 7-8 years too late. MS will no doubt, at some point, release something like Node.js based on this engine. If they do it'll be widely lauded, but you can barely say they're even a "fast follower" here when they're this slow.

nailer 11y ago
Chakra does better than most of its competition on ES6 support: http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/ http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/ (I use v8 and javascriptcore all day but I still appreciate it)
- nly 11y ago
  Temporarily perhaps. Most of the gains look to have happened within the long IE11 to Edge 12 release cycle. Firefox 45 looks like it'll leap ahead again, and they're on a 6 week release cycle... I'm not disputing MS have made impressive efforts. I've just yet to see anything from them that would make me put long-term stock in their open source commitments.
  - hirsin 11y ago
    Chakra has been well ahead of the other browsers for >1 year now. That lead has been declining (as there's only so much of 100% you can implement), but kangax has always shown it to be ahead.
simonw 11y ago
"MS will no doubt, at some point, release something like Node.js based on this engine" https://github.com/Microsoft/node https://github.com/Microsoft/node - "This project enables Node.js to optionally use the Chakra JavaScript engine."

jrcii 11y ago

> MS really changed its approach to software Their open-source friendliness has unfortunately coincided with a decline of their respect for user privacy and choice (Windows 10). I find the "New Microsoft" bittersweet.

DoubleMalt 11y ago
While this is true, only open source makes choice and privacy even possible. They are obviously trying to reinvent themselves partly in the image of Google, whose motto "Don't be evil" also sounds very hollow nowadays. But I shudder when I think of a world where Google is built upon closed software. [To clarify: I know that Google does not open most of their software. However, with their reliance on open source software they were a big driver for the legitimacy of the movement]
- Arkanosis 11y ago
  Well, actually, most of the issues I've with Google are related with some of their closed software. Which makes me agree very hard with your first point, btw.
wslh 11y ago
I don't really like the user privacy approach on Windows 10 but I wonder if they will change that approach soon or someone else (third party) will came up with a tool to automatically handle this issue.
- somebehemoth 11y ago
  I found this tool in another HN discussion about this Win 10 privacy. I don't know if this tool works to solve the entire problem: https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking/ https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking/. If anyone can vouch for this tool's effectiveness I would like to know.
  - XzetaU8 11y ago
    http://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/14/comparison-of-windows-10-privacy-tools/ http://www.ghacks.net/2015/08/14/comparison-of-windows-10-pr...

CrowFly 11y ago

I switched back to Windows 10 as my primary desktop and laptops OS after years of running Mac -- especially on laptops. We do a lot of high-end GPU stuff here, and Apple doesn't make any hardware that supports multiple high-end NVIDIA cards in any practical way. And no Apple monitor does 100% AppleRGB or any of the cinema color spaces, so we always needed third party monitors when doing color work. Windows 10 is as nice and stable as Mac OS used to be (before Steve Jobs died).