Windows 10 brought a number of innovations to Microsoft’s consumer operating system. Beyond offering Windows 10 as a free upgrade, something somewhat unusual for the software giant, Microsoft has completely revamped the look and feel of Windows as we know it. Perhaps one of the biggest changes to those used to platform, beyond the all new start menu, of course, is the introduction of Microsoft Edge, a web browser created specifically for Windows 10.

Why a new web browser? In the past, our choices were fairly limited, but more and more web browsers launched and failed over the last decade. Until Microsoft Edge, our browser choices for Windows mainly consisted of Internet Explorer (which did not have the best reputation), Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome. Each of these web browsers have their own pros and cons. It is no surprise that Microsoft developed a brand new web browser to go along with Windows 10, which is said to be their most revolutionary operating system to date. These days, web browsers are more about speed than anything else, so it is no surprise that Microsoft Edge set to beat out existing web browsers, and surpassed some on their very own bench marks.

Microsoft Edge began as Project Spartan, and introduced a number of new features especially geared towards those living in the Internet age. Edge allows you to “ink” websites, letting you write and draw right on a webpage, then share it with someone else quickly and easily. This is especially useful on the Microsoft Surface tablet platform, making Edge the most interactive web browser available. Edge also features Microsoft’s digital assistant, Cortana, to help guide users around the Internet.

One of the central parts of Edge is Chakra, which is the brand new JavaScript engine Microsoft designed from the ground up. Beyond JavaScript on the Internet, Chakra has evolved to power HTML, CSS and Java Script applications across Windows 10 environments, far surpassing the contracts for which it was originally designed. Chakra has evolved a long way since it really began to be utilized in Windows 8.1. After adding support for the APIs which were a part of the Windows SDK. Chakra has been utilized in Microsoft products such as Outlook.com since then, and can now be utilized for Universal Windows applications.

As Microsoft has continued to grow and evolve, along with all of the other technologies around us, they’ve put a huge amount of effort into areas completely new to them. Recently, Microsoft announced a partnership with RedHat, further dipping their toes into a whole new world. This isn’t their first foray into environments typically powered by the open source movement, they’ve also developed their own flavor of Linux, and announced future SSH support in Windows.

Microsoft Edge has proved another opportunity for Microsoft to continue to develop their open source practices. Microsoft has decided to open source the core components of their home grown Chakra JavaScript engine as ChakraCore . ChakraCore will be opened for contributions on GitHub in January. What does this mean for Windows exactly? It could be the dawn of a new era, where open source applications continue to be developed and used on this notoriously closed platform.

Linux on Azure, open source Microsoft Browser, and .NET being built as open source. This truly does look like Microsoft making its foray into the next generation of computing, both in the data center and in the cloud. It would seem that as Apple open sources the Swift platform, that we are seeing a real shift in how much value can be gotten by embracing the open source community. Exciting, and open, times are ahead for sure.