8 ms·

This is good news for a healthy Node.js ecosystem, but I can't see what’s in it for Microsoft. V8-based Node.js works fine on Windows and Azure, so they don’t n

This is good news for a healthy Node.js ecosystem, but I can't see what’s in it for Microsoft. V8-based Node.js works fine on Windows and Azure, so they don’t need this to attract Node.js developers and the npm ecosystem to their platform. Are there any theories about how this (presumably substantial) investment makes business sense for MS?

vegabook 10y ago
It's less about an explicit positive for MS than a necessary rearguard against a trend negative in the form of the encroachment of Linux. If they don't do (things like) this, they'll be shut out of the server-side ecosystem altogether. MS needs to hedge its bets and ensure that if Linux achieves total domination, they still have a very good technical offering on that platform that does not rely on their arch enemy. So put as much stuff onto Linux as possible, then sell services/support etc IBM-style. And of course they also hope to bring in dev resources for free!
pjmlp 10y ago
Oracle is also making JavaScript having first class support on the JVM since Java 8. JavaScript has just reach the same status as many other languages in having the freedom of multiple implementations.
madmax96 10y ago
Easy: embrace, extend, and extinguish. If Microsoft behaves as they have done in the past, this is what will happen: 1. Make Node run on top of Chakra [x] 2. Give Chakra non-standard features and sell communities on them while pointing out to dissenters that the extensions are open source [] 3. Gradually allow open source work on the product to die and commercialize it [] Microsoft has lost a lot of people's trust. My grandfather used to tell me that trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. Once trust is lost, it's even tougher to earn back. It's going to take some convincing on their end if they want developers to trust them. It doesn't __matter__ if they appear to act more ethically than their competitors, that's not how trust works, and it won't convince a lot of people that have watched Microsoft for a while that they've suddenly changed their ways. EDIT: funny this is being downvoted considering eee was an actual strategy Microsoft has historically employed according to the US Justice Department. This isn't even conspiracy theory stuff -- this is real life. Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it.
- addicted 10y ago
  This makes no sense at all when Chakra core is open source. If MS creates a closed source branch, then the most likely result will be for someone to fork the ChakraCore code and continue NodeJS dev based on the open source fork.
  - madmax96 10y ago
    Being "open source" is meaningless if there isn't a community actively building the software and no one understands (or very few) understand the code outside the organization. Open source is luring developers into a false sense of security -- it's possible to implement features that could not be ported easily into competitor's products and have no formal specification provided anywhere. Even if they have a specification, there is no guarantee that the specification will remain up-to-date as time progresses. Also, I even said: > while pointing out to dissenters that the extensions > are open source Open source doesn't mean anything.
    - addicted 10y ago
      I simply cannot foresee a scenario where the Node community is active enough to put in the effort to make Node work with ChakraCore, anode continues to remain popular and widely used, but after adopting ChakraCore the community does down to the point where they are incapable of replacing ChakraCore if MS turns hostile. In addition, if ChakraCore is adopted, it's almost certain there will be a major fork that continues running on V8. The most likely scenario will be that Node will continue to run both in parallel, and soon enough the JS engine bindings will be abstracted enough that it may even become a bring your own JS Engine type software.
      - madmax96 10y ago
        I'm not concerned about Node on Chakra necessarily -- its developers are probably smart enough to avoid this issue; I'm concerned about applications running on Node on Chakra. Unless you avoid using __any__ non-standard behavior, Microsoft owns you. Using Chakra is risky. There is a very real possibility that Microsoft will make developers regret trusting them. The only possible payoff is that maybe you need one less app instance. Maybe. It's foolish to put you, your codebase, and your organization at risk for this.
jamescostian 10y ago
I think Microsoft knows how bad of a rap they got back in the days of IE6, and they know that people don't really change their opinions very easily. So they're hoping to change the minds of devs (which is why they've open sourced so much - they're trying to look better and nicer, and now they're taking it further by putting in a lot of work into languages/ecosystems that aren't their own). Through their charitable work, they look like the "good guys". The great thing about getting devs to like MS is that those devs might praise MS when talking to their non-developer friends, and their non-developer friends might ascribe a lot of value to that praise simply because they know that devs probably know more about tech companies. In other words, by getting devs to like/trust MS more, non-devs will also like/trust MS more
- avar 10y ago
  These recent moves aren't making me trust Microsoft anymore than before. It's fantastic that they're open sourcing some stuff these days, but the things they're open sourcing and external projects they're contributing to are all either cost centers (nobody makes money on browser engines these days), or areas where they've lost the battle for cloud hosting, and are hoping to get a leg in on Linux-based hosting. Now if they were to open source something like MSSQL, Exchange server, truly open up the office format, or pretty much anything where they haven't utterly been defeated by existing open source products I'd be impressed and might think their company culture is truly changing. As it stands I don't see any reason to think that this isn't just all part of an experimental marketing strategy to bring already lost markets back under the Microsoft umbrella, and once they can achieve lock-in again; goodbye open source.
  - edgyswingset 10y ago
    With .NET Core, all .NET languages, and ASP.NET Core being open source I'd say they've made that jump. It's literally millions of developers who use .NET and pay for Visual Studio (not to mention, this is what an incredible amount of Microsoft's products are built with), which last I checked is a billon-dollar business for MSFT. The open source stuff is where they're taking that business strategically, or at least it certainly seems that way.
jaxondu 10y ago
MS is using Electron for Visual Studio Code, so I can see them using NodeChakraCore instead down the road. They might push it as the way to develop cross platform app, with WebAssembly coming, making it the preferred platform is probably what MS wants. They are planning for Web 4.0.
niftich 10y ago
It's a hedge against Google. Google, through V8, Chromium, Chrome, Chrome OS, Android, and Dart, has a large say in the future of the web platform, browsers, apps, the future of Javascript, etc. Time and time again, Google has used their substantial influence and market share to make unilateral decisions affecting the web platform [1][2][3][4][5][6]; the individual merits of each decision notwithstanding, Google can do just about anything and it will affect enough of the userbase that others must compensate or follow suit. By offering an alternative to V8 monoculture, they can protect against Google using its influence to drive the Javascript platform in its own direction. [1] SHA1 sunset: https://security.googleblog.com/2014/09/gradually-sunsetting-sha-1.html https://security.googleblog.com/2014/09/gradually-sunsetting... [2] NPAPI discontinuation: https://blog.chromium.org/2014/11/the-final-countdown-for-npapi.html https://blog.chromium.org/2014/11/the-final-countdown-for-np... [3] Block Flash by default: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!searchin/chromium-dev/HTML5$20by$20default/chromium-dev/0wWoRRhTA_E/__E3jf40OAAJ https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!searchin/ch... [4] Chrome ignoring autocomplete=off: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=468153#c164 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=468153... [5] VP9 available in WebRTC: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/01/vp9-webrtc?hl=en https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/01/vp9-webrtc... [6] H.264 in WebRTC still gated behind a flag: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500605 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500605
- SBArbeit 10y ago
  This. As much as I personally don't like JavaScript, it's not up to me whether it exists and is used, and having an advertising company de facto in charge of how people perceive its implementation simply isn't a Good Thing for the web in general.
- kuschku 10y ago
  #5 and #6 are even worse, because it basically means Google can dictate whatever terms onto you, if you develop a competing browser. As VP9 is heavily patented, and the license only allows you to use it if you don't ever sue Google, you're out of luck if Google ever fucks you over somewhere else.
nojvek 10y ago
Browsers send queries to search engines. Search engines have ads. Ads shit gold. It makes sense for Microsoft to not loose too much market share to v8 or chrome. What if node running on chakra on azure vms performs amazingly well?
frik 10y ago
Probably Microsoft want to take over NodeJS ecosystem. They are lobbying to replace v8 engine with their chakra engine for Win32 builds. Read up about the history of the company, it can be very bad if the official NodeJS project switches to chakra for one or all platforms. So it's in probably bad news that Microsoft targets NodeJS even more. And their TypeScript adventure and how they steer/lobby the ES6/7 development in their interest isn't great for JS and WebAssembly. They have a vast interest to port their class based old C++/C# codebase of Office tools and Monaco editor to the web. They could stick with their new delayed lacklustre rather unfinished DotNetCore 1.0 ecosystem. Let's hope Google and others cone to the rescue to help NodeJS. On the other side I really wonder why Google switched to TypeScript for one of their project. Maybe the choose between Facebook and Microsoft and favoured the later because he former is an even bigger competitor in WebFrameworks (React), because they were late to the game?

vegabook 10y ago

It's less about an explicit positive for MS than a necessary rearguard against a trend negative in the form of the encroachment of Linux. If they don't do (things like) this, they'll be shut out of the server-side ecosystem altogether. MS needs to hedge its bets and ensure that if Linux achieves total domination, they still have a very good technical offering on that platform that does not rely on their arch enemy. So put as much stuff onto Linux as possible, then sell services/support etc IBM-style. And of course they also hope to bring in dev resources for free!

pjmlp 10y ago

Oracle is also making JavaScript having first class support on the JVM since Java 8. JavaScript has just reach the same status as many other languages in having the freedom of multiple implementations.

madmax96 10y ago

Easy: embrace, extend, and extinguish. If Microsoft behaves as they have done in the past, this is what will happen: 1. Make Node run on top of Chakra [x] 2. Give Chakra non-standard features and sell communities on them while pointing out to dissenters that the extensions are open source [] 3. Gradually allow open source work on the product to die and commercialize it [] Microsoft has lost a lot of people's trust. My grandfather used to tell me that trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. Once trust is lost, it's even tougher to earn back. It's going to take some convincing on their end if they want developers to trust them. It doesn't __matter__ if they appear to act more ethically than their competitors, that's not how trust works, and it won't convince a lot of people that have watched Microsoft for a while that they've suddenly changed their ways. EDIT: funny this is being downvoted considering eee was an actual strategy Microsoft has historically employed according to the US Justice Department. This isn't even conspiracy theory stuff -- this is real life. Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it.

addicted 10y ago
This makes no sense at all when Chakra core is open source. If MS creates a closed source branch, then the most likely result will be for someone to fork the ChakraCore code and continue NodeJS dev based on the open source fork.
- madmax96 10y ago
  Being "open source" is meaningless if there isn't a community actively building the software and no one understands (or very few) understand the code outside the organization. Open source is luring developers into a false sense of security -- it's possible to implement features that could not be ported easily into competitor's products and have no formal specification provided anywhere. Even if they have a specification, there is no guarantee that the specification will remain up-to-date as time progresses. Also, I even said: > while pointing out to dissenters that the extensions > are open source Open source doesn't mean anything.
  - addicted 10y ago
    I simply cannot foresee a scenario where the Node community is active enough to put in the effort to make Node work with ChakraCore, anode continues to remain popular and widely used, but after adopting ChakraCore the community does down to the point where they are incapable of replacing ChakraCore if MS turns hostile. In addition, if ChakraCore is adopted, it's almost certain there will be a major fork that continues running on V8. The most likely scenario will be that Node will continue to run both in parallel, and soon enough the JS engine bindings will be abstracted enough that it may even become a bring your own JS Engine type software.
    - madmax96 10y ago
      I'm not concerned about Node on Chakra necessarily -- its developers are probably smart enough to avoid this issue; I'm concerned about applications running on Node on Chakra. Unless you avoid using __any__ non-standard behavior, Microsoft owns you. Using Chakra is risky. There is a very real possibility that Microsoft will make developers regret trusting them. The only possible payoff is that maybe you need one less app instance. Maybe. It's foolish to put you, your codebase, and your organization at risk for this.

jamescostian 10y ago

I think Microsoft knows how bad of a rap they got back in the days of IE6, and they know that people don't really change their opinions very easily. So they're hoping to change the minds of devs (which is why they've open sourced so much - they're trying to look better and nicer, and now they're taking it further by putting in a lot of work into languages/ecosystems that aren't their own). Through their charitable work, they look like the "good guys". The great thing about getting devs to like MS is that those devs might praise MS when talking to their non-developer friends, and their non-developer friends might ascribe a lot of value to that praise simply because they know that devs probably know more about tech companies. In other words, by getting devs to like/trust MS more, non-devs will also like/trust MS more

avar 10y ago
These recent moves aren't making me trust Microsoft anymore than before. It's fantastic that they're open sourcing some stuff these days, but the things they're open sourcing and external projects they're contributing to are all either cost centers (nobody makes money on browser engines these days), or areas where they've lost the battle for cloud hosting, and are hoping to get a leg in on Linux-based hosting. Now if they were to open source something like MSSQL, Exchange server, truly open up the office format, or pretty much anything where they haven't utterly been defeated by existing open source products I'd be impressed and might think their company culture is truly changing. As it stands I don't see any reason to think that this isn't just all part of an experimental marketing strategy to bring already lost markets back under the Microsoft umbrella, and once they can achieve lock-in again; goodbye open source.
- edgyswingset 10y ago
  With .NET Core, all .NET languages, and ASP.NET Core being open source I'd say they've made that jump. It's literally millions of developers who use .NET and pay for Visual Studio (not to mention, this is what an incredible amount of Microsoft's products are built with), which last I checked is a billon-dollar business for MSFT. The open source stuff is where they're taking that business strategically, or at least it certainly seems that way.

jaxondu 10y ago

MS is using Electron for Visual Studio Code, so I can see them using NodeChakraCore instead down the road. They might push it as the way to develop cross platform app, with WebAssembly coming, making it the preferred platform is probably what MS wants. They are planning for Web 4.0.

niftich 10y ago

It's a hedge against Google. Google, through V8, Chromium, Chrome, Chrome OS, Android, and Dart, has a large say in the future of the web platform, browsers, apps, the future of Javascript, etc. Time and time again, Google has used their substantial influence and market share to make unilateral decisions affecting the web platform [1][2][3][4][5][6]; the individual merits of each decision notwithstanding, Google can do just about anything and it will affect enough of the userbase that others must compensate or follow suit. By offering an alternative to V8 monoculture, they can protect against Google using its influence to drive the Javascript platform in its own direction. [1] SHA1 sunset: https://security.googleblog.com/2014/09/gradually-sunsetting-sha-1.html https://security.googleblog.com/2014/09/gradually-sunsetting... [2] NPAPI discontinuation: https://blog.chromium.org/2014/11/the-final-countdown-for-npapi.html https://blog.chromium.org/2014/11/the-final-countdown-for-np... [3] Block Flash by default: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!searchin/chromium-dev/HTML5$20by$20default/chromium-dev/0wWoRRhTA_E/__E3jf40OAAJ https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!searchin/ch... [4] Chrome ignoring autocomplete=off: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=468153#c164 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=468153... [5] VP9 available in WebRTC: https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/01/vp9-webrtc?hl=en https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/01/vp9-webrtc... [6] H.264 in WebRTC still gated behind a flag: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500605 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500605

SBArbeit 10y ago
This. As much as I personally don't like JavaScript, it's not up to me whether it exists and is used, and having an advertising company de facto in charge of how people perceive its implementation simply isn't a Good Thing for the web in general.
kuschku 10y ago
#5 and #6 are even worse, because it basically means Google can dictate whatever terms onto you, if you develop a competing browser. As VP9 is heavily patented, and the license only allows you to use it if you don't ever sue Google, you're out of luck if Google ever fucks you over somewhere else.

nojvek 10y ago

Browsers send queries to search engines. Search engines have ads. Ads shit gold. It makes sense for Microsoft to not loose too much market share to v8 or chrome. What if node running on chakra on azure vms performs amazingly well?

frik 10y ago

Probably Microsoft want to take over NodeJS ecosystem. They are lobbying to replace v8 engine with their chakra engine for Win32 builds. Read up about the history of the company, it can be very bad if the official NodeJS project switches to chakra for one or all platforms. So it's in probably bad news that Microsoft targets NodeJS even more. And their TypeScript adventure and how they steer/lobby the ES6/7 development in their interest isn't great for JS and WebAssembly. They have a vast interest to port their class based old C++/C# codebase of Office tools and Monaco editor to the web. They could stick with their new delayed lacklustre rather unfinished DotNetCore 1.0 ecosystem. Let's hope Google and others cone to the rescue to help NodeJS. On the other side I really wonder why Google switched to TypeScript for one of their project. Maybe the choose between Facebook and Microsoft and favoured the later because he former is an even bigger competitor in WebFrameworks (React), because they were late to the game?