Microsoft has open-sourced Comic Chat, a nostalgic piece of internet history from the mid-1990s that let users communicate in chat rooms using comic-style avatars and speech bubbles. The source code was released under an MIT license on Microsoft official open source blog.
Originally released in 1996 as part of Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0, Comic Chat was one of the earliest graphical chat clients. Instead of plain text conversations, it rendered chat sessions as comic strips, with each participant represented by a cartoon avatar. Users could choose from a set of pre-designed characters and their messages appeared in speech bubbles above their avatar, with facial expressions automatically generated based on the text content.
The software was developed by Microsoft researcher David Kurlander and gained a cult following among early internet users. Though Microsoft Comic Chat was eventually discontinued, it remains a fondly remembered piece of internet culture from the dial-up era.
The open-source release includes the full source code, allowing developers and nostalgia enthusiasts to explore, modify, and potentially revive the chat application for modern platforms. The code is available on GitHub, where it has already attracted significant interest from the developer community.
Microsoft decision to open-source Comic Chat follows a broader trend of the company releasing legacy software code under permissive licenses. The move allows preservation of a piece of digital history and gives the community an opportunity to keep the software alive.
This nostalgic release has resonated strongly with developers who remember using the application in the early days of the consumer internet.
This article was adapted from Hacker News. Read the original here.
