Microsoft Releases 1996 Comic Chat Program's Source Code On GitHub
Conceived in 1995 by researcher David Kurlander, the program turned IRC chats into comic panels and introduced the Comic Sans font.
- Comic Chat shipped in 1996 bundled with Internet Explorer 3 and Windows 98, localized into 24 languages.
- Artist Jim Woodring designed the characters; the project became a research paper presented at SIGGRAPH '96.
- Microsoft posted the code at github.com/microsoft/comic-chat with AI-assisted updates for modern Visual Studio and IRC servers.
Why it matters: What does it cost a company to give away code it stopped selling thirty years ago? Nothing.
Microsoft Open Source Blog ↗ · Jul 16, 20267/16/26 · ✓ Checked✓ Check