Microsoft, Nokia Adopt jQuery Library

by Reuven Lerner - Oct. 02, 2008Comments (1)

jQuery, one of the best-known open-source libraries for JavaScript access and manipulation, was tapped earlier this week as Microsoft's choice for JavaScript library. This means that jQuery will be integrated into Microsoft's Visual Studio developer tools, with additional integration into the ASP.NET Ajax framework.

This announcement came on the same day as a similar one from Nokia, which announced that jQuery would be integrated into its Web run-time platform. Announcements were made in a variety of locations, including Rey Blango's blog, and posts by Microsoft programmers Scott Guthrie and Scott Hanelsman. The original author of jQuery, John Resig, wrote a blog post that not only announced the news, but described some of the improvements that will come to jQuery as a result, including additional software testing.

Nokia has previously used and released open-source software, and has integrated open-source software into some of its projects. In June, Nokia took control of the Symbian mobile platform, announcing that Symbian would be released under an open-source license within the next two years.

Microsoft's announcement was far more dramatic than Nokia's, both because this marks the first time that Microsoft is embracing an open-source library into its core developer toolkit, and because Microsoft has been so hostile toward open-source software in the past. Much of Microsoft's hostility has been toward the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), a popular open-source license that allows end users to make modifications, on condition that the source code is provided for those modifications.

The fact that jQuery is dual-licensed under both the GNU GPL and the MIT License might raise licensing issues or questions in the future. Of course, this might be a non-issue; as Scott Guthrie writes in his blog post, "We will distribute the jQuery JavaScript library as-is, and will not be forking or changing the source from the main jQuery branch." Moreover, Hanelsman writes that Microsoft will be distributing jQuery via the MIT license, allowing it to bundle and jQuery in proprietary applications without getting tangled in the GPL.


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