4 ms·

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.

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.
      - chii 10y ago
        Why can't you say the same for v8?
        KirinDave 10y ago
        Because Google is a company of unceasing virtue and "Don't be evil?" Or perhaps because many people have been conditioned to dislike anything Microsoft does without actually analyzing it's impact or relevance. Certainly it seems like there aren't many rational facts to thia person's argument. I very much agree that "non-standard behavior" in an open source product exists that could be directly replicated. One of the major benefits of open source licensing is to hedge against that behavior.
- castratikron 10y ago
  If you alone hold the copyright to a piece of software you can change the license at any time.
  - benaiah 10y ago
    But that doesn't apply to versions that already had an open license. You can't retroactivally revoke a license, you can only add it to new versions.
    - castratikron 10y ago
      That's not true, and it's happened before: http://www.cnet.com/news/nessus-security-tool-closes-its-source/ http://www.cnet.com/news/nessus-security-tool-closes-its-sou... A project like Linux couldn't do this, since it has thousands of authors, and each author would have to agree to the change. But if the author is a single person, or a corporation, then only one person has to make the decision.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - KirinDave 10y ago
        You're misreading the article, I think. They didn't release a new version under the GPL. They didn't retroactively undo licensing for older versions. It is not at all clear that you can snap your fingers and renegotiate an existing license arbitrarily like that. You need to do it in advance of the agreement.

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.
    - chii 10y ago
      Why can't you say the same for v8?
      - KirinDave 10y ago
        Because Google is a company of unceasing virtue and "Don't be evil?" Or perhaps because many people have been conditioned to dislike anything Microsoft does without actually analyzing it's impact or relevance. Certainly it seems like there aren't many rational facts to thia person's argument. I very much agree that "non-standard behavior" in an open source product exists that could be directly replicated. One of the major benefits of open source licensing is to hedge against that behavior.
castratikron 10y ago
If you alone hold the copyright to a piece of software you can change the license at any time.
- benaiah 10y ago
  But that doesn't apply to versions that already had an open license. You can't retroactivally revoke a license, you can only add it to new versions.
  - castratikron 10y ago
    That's not true, and it's happened before: http://www.cnet.com/news/nessus-security-tool-closes-its-source/ http://www.cnet.com/news/nessus-security-tool-closes-its-sou... A project like Linux couldn't do this, since it has thousands of authors, and each author would have to agree to the change. But if the author is a single person, or a corporation, then only one person has to make the decision.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - KirinDave 10y ago
      You're misreading the article, I think. They didn't release a new version under the GPL. They didn't retroactively undo licensing for older versions. It is not at all clear that you can snap your fingers and renegotiate an existing license arbitrarily like that. You need to do it in advance of the agreement.