Microsoft Goes Nostalgic In Newest Open-Source Drop: Comic Chat Open-Sourced After 30 Years
The most unexpected open-source code drop from Microsoft likely ever is today's open-sourcing of Comic Chat... What's next, Clippy? Comic Chat provided automatic illustrations of comic avatars for representing the IRC chat. Comic Chat was later renamed Microsoft Chat 2.0 but ultimately not all that important nor is it really useful these days with the software having been discontinued more than two decades ago.
The biggest impact of Microsoft Comic Chat was that it ushered in the era of Microsoft's Comic Sans font.
As for Microsoft's decision to open-source Comic Chat in 2026:
"By releasing Comic Chat as open source, we’re preserving an important piece of software history and giving the community an opportunity to explore, learn, and build upon it.
The source is available now for exploration, study, and experimentation. 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. These are not polished re-releases, but worked examples that show Comic Chat can still come alive on modern systems. We’re excited to see what improvements, ports, experiments, and entirely new forms the community brings to it next."
So now Microsoft engineers are even playing around with AI-powered modernization of 1990s era software...
More details on Comic Chat going open-source can be found in today's announcement. Comic Chat is now open-source under an MIT license on GitHub.
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