In a bid to boost its new Edge browser, Microsoft has announced that it is putting a key component of the said browser up for open source.
The software giant made the announcement during this year's JSConf US Last Call conference in Florida. Microsoft said that they will be releasing Chakra as the ChakraCore to the open source community. Chakra is the component of Edge responsible for running Javascript code.
In a statement released by the company on its official blog, Microsoft said that aside from the open source community, several organizations have also already expressed their interest in contributing to the development of the platform.
Chandra was developed by Microsoft in 2008 to serve as its main Javascript engine. Aside from running Edge and the earlier Internet Explorer, it is also present in other company products, such as Azure DocumentDB, Cortana, Outlook.com, and Typescript. It is also used to implement Windows 10 applications for the Xbox game console.
The ChakraCore release will contain all the needed components to parse, interpret and compile JavaScript code. Furthermore, the release would be "platform agnostic", meaning it will not be tied to a particular browser, allowing developers to implement a variety of API's, Forbes reported.
"We're investing more than ever in improving Chakra, and are excited to team up with our community to drive further improvements," Microsoft expressed in its statement.
ChakraCore is set to be released in January and will be available on its public GitHub repository. The release will initially be available only for Windows 10, but ports for other platforms like Linux. Mac OS X, Android, and iOS are expected to follow.