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badminton1

The new Microsoft

* Microsoft and node.js

1. Microsoft embraces node.js (embrace)

2. Microsoft forks node (extend) https://github.com/nodejs/node-chakracore

3. Soon! (extinguish)

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* Microsoft and R

1. Microsoft embraces R

2. Microsoft forks R. Fully compatible, but interoperability is one-way only. https://mran.microsoft.com/open

3. Soon! (extinguish)

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The old Microsoft:

- Microsoft <3 Apple -> Let's work on Macintosh -> Windows

- Microsoft <3 IBM -> Let's work on OS/2! -> Windows NT

- Microsoft <3 Sun -> Let's work on Java -> .NET

- Microsoft <3 Sybase -> Let's work on Sybase ASE -> SQL Server

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This sudden change of heart always reminds me of Ming the Merciless' wedding vows in the film Flash Gordon:

Priest: Do you, Ming the Merciless, Ruler of the Universe take this Earthling, Dale Arden to be your Empress of the hour?

Ming: (pause) of the hour, Yes.

Priest: Do you promise to use her as you will?

Ming: (pause, then very slyly) Certainly!

Priest: Not to blast her into space?

Ming: (silence)

Priest: ....Until such time as you get the whim....?

Ming: I do.

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I think people are blind to the creeping generally. They need way more time before they gain any trust from this space, especially after the Linux is Cancer comments, Halloween documents, general decline in privacy and general decline in ability to accept feedback (hey Scott Hanselman, where's our fix for SCVMM gone? - nothing back from MSFT for 16 days on github AGAIN)

2. Microsoft forks node (extend) https://github.com/nodejs/node-chakracore

node-chakracore is an option to change the dependency from V8 (Google) to Chakra (Microsoft). Suggesting the long term prospects for Node would be better if we only have the option of Google's V8 doesn't make much sense. What happens if Google kill the V8 project (however unlikely that is).

In that event, it is open source and someone can pick it up.

Yeah, it's so clear they're trying to extinguish nodejs, it's not like they used node-chakra to push for a better engine abstraction in nodejs which brought NAPI

The problem is that it is not so much of an "abstraction".

It is a leaky abstraction. Your application code will be running on Chakra's version of ECMAScript, which is whatever they want it to be.

It could start the equivalent of the 90s browser wars.

> Your application code will be running on Chakra's version of ECMAScript, which is whatever they want it to be.

So just like any other browser and JS-runtime. Exactly like v8 actually.

Node chakra is something you can knowingly opt in to use. And they've made efforts trying to get it merged back into mainline, just like any other good open-source citizen.

So how is that a problem again?

I am very skeptical of Microsoft's claims of node-chakracore interoperability.

For R for instance, the interoperability is one-way only. Microsoft R Open can fetch libraries from CRAN, but regular R software cannot use libraries from MRAN.

It's a superset of features, and once you depend on the extended features you cannot go back. In this way you are driven away from the project.

After the "extended" product gains the largest market share, then comes the "extinguish" phase (the end of collaboration), which has been their final goal all along: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

The "vm neutrality" claim on node is very specific to Chakra. I don't see them trying to integrate other VMs as well. Then, node's NAPI team are almost all Microsoft employees: https://github.com/nodejs/abi-stable-node

Welcome to open source, where people work on what benefits them.

If Microsoft are the only people seriously interested in maintaining the ability to run Node on ChakraCore as well as V8, of course the team of people working on the necessary abstractions will be mostly Microsoft employees.

Of course, since V8 runs on Windows, not a huge number of people are going to be demanding ChakraCore support - but Microsoft presumably believe they have, or are developing, sufficiently awesome JS runtime technology to make this worth investing in. And it's not like it's worth Microsoft's time to invest in making Node also run on whatever Mozilla's JS engine is called at the moment (I've lost track). But their work on Chakra support presumably would make that a lot easier for someone who wanted to come along and support a third runtime engine.

And it does benefit the whole ecosystem to not be 100% reliant on V8.

Creating fragmentation will not necesarily be a good thing. Developers need to be aware of which vm is in use and if you release modules you will now have to build and test on Chakra too. 2x the build time at the very least. It is not all benefits.

So should Firefox, Safari, Opera, and edge all just throw in the towel so we can standardize on chrome? Because I always thought having options was a good thing. You seem to want to get to personally pick winners and losers "because fragmentation".

But JavaScript is the language if the web.

JavaScript code and libraries and other web-standards should not be built on a monoculture.

v8 plays well with others. I usually read JS documentation from Mozilla's Developer Network and works as documented in v8.

On the other hand we all know what happened with Microsoft had the majority of the JS market share. No need to go back to that.

Microsoft had a chance and they wasted it. They got the keys of the car for a night and they got drunk in it and crashed it.

Isn't the current CEO against that strategy? I listened to an interview with him not long ago in which he said the biggest mistake they made was thinking that the market is winner take all. He instead proposed that they should be working with other companies because many times they share customers and that by working together they increase the total market size.

Only time will tell.

I would rather focus on what they do, not what they say.

e.g:

- Microsoft <3 Linux (what they say) https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/windowsserver/2015/05/06...

- Microsoft makes 2 billion USD collecting patent money from Android manufacturers (what they do)

Then... CEOs cannot do whatever they want. They respond to the board.

Then why did they drop Mobile?

Because it was no longer worth throwing money after. Instead they're working to make sure Microsoft technologies - their accounts, their email, their Office products etc. - work well on iOS and Android devices. They're also working to enable cross-platform mobile development using Microsoft technologies (i.e. they bought Xamarin), which helps with getting app developers using (and paying for) Azure backend services because of course Microsoft provide solid .NET SDKs for Azure services.

I suspect they'll make another effort to break into the mobile device space in the future, but it probably won't be for a while. Where's the marketplace opportunity at the moment? At least until they can distance themselves from the current perception of their mobile experience.

Exactly. It was Ballmer who started the mobile strategy and it was up to Nadella to salvage it.

Making sure Office, etc., work well on Android and iOS is perfectly in line with his idea that you can work with competitors to increase revenue for everyone involved.

Contrast this with Amazon, who believes that it is a winner takes all market, and they do not have support for their competitor's products and even refuse to list them in their store.

Hope they don't try to extend Python, cause they sure love the language right now.

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