One of the good things about having your own open source code hosting service is making services open becomes seamless. Since Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion last year, the company has had just that platform. Today, the Windows 10 Calculator app has been placed on GitHub as an open source project.
Now open, developers can contribute to the Windows 10 Calculator with suggestions and features. Microsoft could then use these prototypes to build features that will be available for the app on Windows 10.
Microsoft published the app under the MIT License with the build system, unit tests, product roadmap, and the source code. The company says development is the same as any normal GitHub flow.
“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,” Microsoft explains.
Developing Smaller Apps
The Windows 10 Calculator remains on Windows 10. Now an open source project, Microsoft wants to create more potent features alongside developers. Of course, the Calculator is a secondary non-important app, so perhaps this is a new approach from Microsoft to bring new features to such services.
Indeed, we wouldn't be surprised to see more smaller apps get the same treatment in the near future. Talking specifically about the Calculator open project, Microsoft says developers get full access.
“Through this project, developers can learn from Microsoft's full development lifecycle, as well as reuse the code to build their own experiences. It's also a great example of Fluent app design. To make this even easier, we will be contributing custom controls and API extensions that we use in Calculator and other apps, to projects like the Windows Community Toolkit and the Windows UI Library.”
You can check out the Windows 10 Calculator on GitHub here.