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Microsoft Open Sources its Windows Calculator

posted by chromas on Friday March 08 2019, @10:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the 5318008 dept.

takyon writes:

calc.exe is now open source; there's surprising depth in its ancient code

Microsoft's embrace and adoption of open source software has continued with the surprising decision to publish the code for Windows Calculator and release it on GitHub under the permissive MIT license.

The repository shows Calculator's surprisingly long history. Although it is in some regards one of the most modern Windows applications—it's an early adopter of Fluent Design and has been used to showcase a number of design elements—core parts of the codebase date all the way back to 1995.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Friday March 08 2019, @10:57PM (6 children)

    by looorg (578) on Friday March 08 2019, @10:57PM (#811806)

    Data / Telemetry
    This project collects usage data and sends it to Microsoft to help improve our products and services. Read our privacy statement to learn more. Telemetry is disabled in development builds by default, and can be enabled with the SEND_TELEMETRY build flag.

    So even the calculator collects telemetry data that it snitches back to Microsoft?

    Anyway since it's just the Win10 version of Calc this just became a lot less interesting. Shouldn't they have a lot of older but still interesting legacy projects they could have released as open source instead if they actually wanted people to learn and help out. This seems to be, at best, some kind of tutorial in how to write a Win10 app.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday March 08 2019, @11:11PM (4 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Friday March 08 2019, @11:11PM (#811811)

    I can't see why it wouldn't.

    Even assuming they're 100% altruistic and only use the telemetry to improve the product (Hah!), a calculator is actually a quite sophisticated and widely-used tool of the sort that could be improved by an analysis of the exact usage patterns commonly seen.

    • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday March 09 2019, @01:07AM

      by MostCynical (2589) on Saturday March 09 2019, @01:07AM (#811845) Journal

      "You're doing what when you calculate sales tax?"

      --
      "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday March 09 2019, @01:26AM (2 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 09 2019, @01:26AM (#811854) Journal

      a calculator is actually a quite sophisticated ... tool

      Hah!

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday March 09 2019, @05:10AM (1 child)

        by Immerman (3985) on Saturday March 09 2019, @05:10AM (#811947)

        Beats the heck out of an abacus or slide rule - and they got us to the moon.

        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday March 09 2019, @10:00AM

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 09 2019, @10:00AM (#811986) Journal

          Yeah, right.
          Marvel at the complexity of a (snitching) calculator application, while it runs on a computer.

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford

  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday March 10 2019, @12:59AM

    by Bot (3902) on Sunday March 10 2019, @12:59AM (#812192) Journal

    > So even the calculator collects telemetry data that it snitches back to Microsoft?

    sure. After the pentium division fiasco each result of a division is sent back to a microsoft server farm, to be confirmed by an outsourced chinese worker (they don't trust microprocessors anymore).

    Proof, China got an influx of capital and became a superpower right after the pentium FDIV bug.

    (isn't AI great for extracting knowledge from the web)

    --
    Account abandoned.