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Microsoft Open-Sources Windows Calculator (betanews.com)
Microsoft said today it has made the source code for its Windows calculator available on GitHub. The company said it hopes to work with contributors to improve the user experience of Windows calculator. In a statement, Dave Grochocki and Howard Wolosky of Microsoft said: Today, we're excited to announce that we are open sourcing Windows Calculator on GitHub under the MIT License. This includes the source code, build system, unit tests, and product roadmap. Our goal is to build an even better user experience in partnership with the community. We are encouraging your fresh perspectives and increased participation to help define the future of Calculator. As developers, if you would like to know how different parts of the Calculator app work, easily integrate Calculator logic or UI into your own applications, or contribute directly to something that ships in Windows, now you can. Calculator will continue to go through all usual testing, compliance, security, quality processes, and Insider flighting, just as we do for our other applications.
While I agree with the general consensus that releasing the source to calculator is underwhelming, I'm wondering if there is more to the plan here.
Maybe Microsoft has a long term goal of making more apps open-source, to help with the support workload or to develop more Microsoft developers and maybe find some UI designers with fresh approaches.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
What makes it so slow?
I took a peek at the code and this is not 24 year old code. It's using the latest C++ whizz-bang features. I happen to not be a fan of that. But the code does appear clean and well written. I think this would be nice for ReactOS to have.