Mascara JavaScript compiler Blog

With the "Beta" designation, it seems a good time to ask: Will Mascara be a paid product? Will Mascara (the python code) be closed-source or open-source?

I'm very supportive of the Mascara effort, whichever way you go, but I am very curious. Of course, if you have additional details (beyond the basic questions above), they would be much appreciated -- even if they're just vague thoughts that may or may not happen.

From what I understood from the agreements that came out of Harmony, the ES4 spec was put on the shelf, unlikely to be resurrected since the community was so divided over it. How do you understand Mascara's place now in the light of Harmony?

Hi Peter,
this is my current plans:

Mascara is going to be a paid product: It is going to be free to download use for personal use, trying it out and learning, but if it is used in production environment, the user will have to buy a licence.

The Python source is going to be available (around the time when the final version 1.0 is released). I expect advanced users might want to extend the language or modify the way the code is generated, and by making the source available, users can make any modifications they want.

The source will probably not be licensed under a true "Open Source(TM)" license, since this will preclude the business plan which is to finance the development by selling licenses. It should be possible for users to share extensions and improvements freely, though.

In the short (version 1.0) perspective I'm focusing on making Mascara usable as a command line tool. In the longer perspective there are several directions I would like to go in.

- I would like to make it easier to "plug-in" different code-generators (for example everyone have their own favorite way of implementing classes) and possibly support a true macro-system, which allows users to extend the language easily.

- I would like to develop closer integration with an editor (probably Eclipse) to create code completion and so on based on the static type info Mascara makes available. Integrated debugging would also be very cool.

Hope this answers your question. If you have any further questions, ask away.

Hi Weston,
This is what I have understood: There have been some tension in the ECMAScript effort because two separate groups have been working on version 3.1 and version 4 in parallel (the currently supported version in browsers is 3.0). This lead to trouble because the 3.1 group made changes to the language which undermined some assumptions in the ES 4 effort.

To solve this problem, the working groups have been merged and work together now. This means everyone is focused on 3.1, and will only resume work on 4 when 3.1 is finalized. In that sense version 4 have been put on the self, but only until after 3.1 which is slated to spring 2009.

Also, the ES4 spec have changed name to "Harmony" to illustrate the new-found cooperation between the two working groups.

The consequences for Mascara is that a finished ES4/Harmony spec is pushed further into the future. This is a bit annoying, but probably a good thing for the web since nobody want a fragmented ECMAScript.

For Mascara it just creates a stronger demand, because advanced JavaScript developers are craving ES4 features like types and classes now.

In that sense Mascara is in the same boat as Adobe which have also gone ahead and implemented the ES4 draft in the latest version of Flash/ActionScript.

Of course we hope that the eventual ES4/Harmony spec will not be to far removed from the current draft, but regardless of the ES4/Harmony spec status, the current Mascara implementation is a powerful and useful tool.

@Olav: Sounds good. We would probably value Mascara enough to justify purchasing it and would definitely appreciate access to the source, as we're Python hackers ourselves.

@weston: From reading between the lines, my guess is that a few features will definitely be removed, but that the majority of ES4 will remain.