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Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source

opensource.microsoft.com

21–30 of 198 posts

Re: Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source

#23
post #18

v1.0-pre and v1.0 share the same internal version number (rup 206, "Beta 2") but differ in ~99 of 111 shared source files [1] While I shouldn't complain because they just won't do these releases in the future and I accept it was a different time; I still find it surprising Microsoft didn't have better version control considering they took it seriously enough to build their own internal version control system (SLM). […

Microsoft had just acquired SourceSafe in 1995, but it's not clear to me how similar to modern version control systems SourceSafe even was in 1995/6. It may have been more of a distributed lock manager than change management system.

Re: Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source

#24
>Alongside the original snapshots, we’ve included a few AI-powered modernization attempts that demonstrate what’s possible—getting this 1990s-era C++ and MFC code building with current Visual Studio tools, connecting to modern IRC servers, and running legibly on today’s high-resolution Windows machines.

Given that MSFT is all in on Rust and WinUI now, maybe they can try doing a full port similar to Bun using Copilot. Anthropic has been milking their Bun port attempt for as much as they can.

Re: Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source

#26
post #19

Comic Chat is a piece of Internet history, but I remember that it was somewhat reviled when I first started being active on IRC. This was around 2002, so it was probably due to some cultural memory rather than anyone having actually used it in years. The issue, as I remember it, is that Comic Chat extended the IRC protocol with support for explicitly indicating the appearance and emoting of your comic character, rath…

Like,

># Appears as TIKI (#G010E010M1)

Re: Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source

#29

The creator is still at Microsoft. Lifer.

As "Principal Program Manager, Copilot Acceleration Team" even. That's sad. It sounds like person in charge of "Hey do you want Copilot? How about now? How about now? And now?! Here's another popup! Do you want it now? Why not?! Have you tried Copilot?" Etc... (I know about title inflation, he's probably not in charge of all that much, but still)

That's the article author Robert Standefer, I don't think he created Comic Chat, that was David Kurlander...

Re: Microsoft Comic Chat is now open source

#30
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As "Principal Program Manager, Copilot Acceleration Team" even. That's sad. It sounds like person in charge of "Hey do you want Copilot? How about now? How about now? And now?! Here's another popup! Do you want it now? Why not?! Have you tried Copilot?" Etc... (I know about title inflation, he's probably not in charge of all that much, but still)

Copilot means so many things now it doesn't even tell you anything about they do.

It was explained to me that the word "Copilot" is just Microsoft's brand for what the rest of us call "AI" - just like "365" means "online", "Azure" means "cloud", "Entra" means "login" and ".NET" used to mean "with a computer".

So when you see something like "Azure Copilot 365" you can pretend they wrote, fully generically, "Online Cloud AI".

If you see a button labelled "Copilot" you understand it would've said "AI" if they were any other company.

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