Microsoft and Nokia Adopt OSS JQuery Framework 126
soliptic writes "The jQuery blog today announced that 'Both Microsoft and Nokia are taking the major step of adopting jQuery as part of their official application development platform.' So the open-source javascript framework will be shipped with Visual Studio and ASP.NET MVC. Microsoft's Scott Hanselman notes: 'It's Open Source, and we'll use it and ship it via its MIT license, unchanged. If there's changes we want, we'll submit a patch just like anyone else.'" There's also a story at eWeek about the decision.
Re:Will they (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah why not? As long as they release all their code under the MIT licence (which they've said they will do), there is no reason not to embrace and extend. The parent project can choose to incorporate Microsoft's code, or not.
From the article, Microsoft have said they will contribute patches upstream rather than forking their own version. But as long as you're sure everybody is releasing their code under the same free licence, 'embrace and extend' is not a problem in the free software world. In many cases it can be beneficial.
Re:Just makes sense... (Score:4, Insightful)
I imagine not, since it would make upgrading a major pain. As long as the site controls which version of jQuery you have, they can opt in to the latest and greatest version without having to wait for the browser manufacturers.
Re:But... (Score:4, Insightful)
Outside of obfuscation, how exactly do you close source a JavaScript library that your browser can access via HTTP? I suppose Microsoft could incorporate it directly into the browser, but that doesn't seem likely.
Re:pity JS is crap to start with (Score:4, Insightful)
it's slow, buggy, and prone to being abused. why are we still using it?
Slow? Not with the next generation of JIT JavaScript compilers coming up in Firefox 3.1, Google Chrome, and WebKit. And I'm sure IE will get there someday. Buggy? Not sure what you even mean by that... particular implementations may be buggy, but a programming language cannot itself be buggy. Prone to being abused? Which language isn't?
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
What he's saying is that although Microsoft will be distributing the JQuery framework as-is, they may decide to use it in a closed-source product, with custom changes that don't get sent upstream. I'm not saying that Microsoft will do that, because I'm not in a position to speak for them, but it would definitely not be outside of their usual MO. Furthermore, parents point is that there is nothing in the MIT license that prevents them from doing this. Whether you agree with the philosophy of the MIT license or not is out of scope and off-topic.
Re:But... (Score:3, Insightful)
yes, because we all know how trustworthy microsoft is when it comes to keeping their promises...
heck, why bother with OSS licenses at all? just trust companies during the "embrace" stage, and i'm sure nothing else will come of it!
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
Outside of obfuscation, how exactly do you close source a JavaScript library that your browser can access via HTTP? I suppose Microsoft could incorporate it directly into the browser, but that doesn't seem likely.
"Close" can mean two things here. Yes, the source will remain visible, since its Javascript. So that's one sense of "open". However, it doesn't need to remain open source in the sense of the license. Microsoft could, in theory, add some features and relicense it under proprietary terms; the MIT license allows that. That is, seeing the source doesn't mean it's open source in the licensing sense.
Happily, Microsoft announced that they won't change the license.
Re:pity JS is crap to start with (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just for cred (Score:3, Insightful)
But I believe this is something different. Even though this probably gives them some code they don't have to write, this is just to use a popular and growing JavaScript library to give ASP.NET MVC some much needed street cred, especially among open source leaning developers.
Though jQuery is better as a general JavaScript library than anything they've come up with, they've had no trouble writing this stuff for themselves before. This is a non-Microsoft developer focused thing that says: "We're cool! jQuery is in the box!" and tries to attract people to their stack by allowing them to leverage their skills with a library they've used elsewhere instead of some MS-only library.
Not eating the dogfood? (Score:3, Insightful)
I was a little bemused by the Microsoft guy's blog... last screenshot before the comments.
He needs to demo something non-trivial, so he switches to Firefox and Firebug.
Tell me about it, Scott!
Re:Yeah, I was... (Score:2, Insightful)
Javascript is copyright just like anything else. Just because you can see the code doesn't mean you're free to use it for your own stuff. For example, you can not legally use non-free Javascript off of any random website.
Re:But... (Score:2, Insightful)
That's right, in a few months Microsoft will submit a patch that ties jQuery hopelessly to IE8... and no one will notice.
Such things tend to happen with projects with no oversight and no established community, of which jQuery is clearly a shining example.
Re:pity JS is crap to start with (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess that it depends upon your definition of "buggy." You can design a language where the Integer object has a destructor named "toString" if you want to. And if someone did that, I would consider the design to be broken.
No, the definition of "buggy" is not open to interpretation. If your language defines a destructor named toString, then that is a feature of the language, not a bug. Any implementation which does not correctly implement it is therefore buggy, but the language itself is not.
Now, anyone is certainly free to argue whether a destructor named toString, or any particular feature of JavaScript, is a good idea, but saying that the language itself is "buggy" or "broken" is, by definition, incorrect.