In a confession that shocked the IT community, Microsoft admitted that they “made a mistake with open source.” This unabashed apology shocked those
But first, let’s talk about the MIT license. The MIT license is an open source license that is the freest available license for software. It means you can download, merge, publish, distribute, and do almost anything you like with this software as it has zero restrictions.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sub-license, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
What does that mean to you? It means that some of the best projects in Windows 10 are now available for open source collaboration and contribution! Below are my 5 favorites.
Visual Studio Code
Have you tried VS Code yet? While Microsoft’s most popular IDE is still Visual Studio with 24.54% share of the GitHub Market, VSCode still holds a notable 6.92% and has bypassed pyCharm and NetBeans! Visual Studio Code has an astonishingly high 66,000+ commits to the open source project and shows no signs of stopping! Check it out and see why a lightweight, highly open-sourced IDE might be a good starting place for your next code project!
Terminal
The Microsoft Windows operating system has taken its fair share of beatings the past 20 years, and one of the most popular sore spots has been the windows terminal period now, thanks to Microsoft’s new philosophy an open source, the windows terminal is up for grabs in the innovation field! Have an idea on how to better write command prompts, PowerShell, WSL code? Look no further than the New Windows terminal.
TypeScript
JavaScript is the backbone of the webs revolution that has taken place the past 15 years. Need a quick website? JavaScript. Want to create a new Teams add on? JavaScript. Well, Microsoft has taken all the best bits of JavaScript and rolled them into their own open source language, TypeScript. Why go with TypeScript? JavaScript can be a little spotty with variables and type casting, instantiating classes. Typescript cleans that up! With 30,000+ commits and 480+ contributors, TypeScript is evolving every day to make a huge impact in web development!
Need to know TypeScript in 5 minutes, click here. New to programming? Check out the “Programming in 5 minutes” doc located here.
Power Toys
With 3200+ commits and 171 contributors, the PowerToys app is a set of vital Windows 10 tools that every Power User needs! Need better keyboard shortcuts? Try the Keyboard Manager with built-in keyboard customizations. Want to bulk resize images (I use this a lot!), try the Image Resizer tool to help you create standardizes images!
Calculator
Some things in life never change…taxes, death, and of course Microsoft calculator. Well, not anymore! (except the taxes and death thing, sorry) … The open-sourced Calculator app has 61 contributors and 540 commits. Have a new idea for the calculator app? Join the community here and change the next version of one of the worlds most popular calculators!
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