Not long ago, Microsoft's Garage department released ScriptLab (ScriptLab), which allows company employees to use their spare time to develop new applications and services. This is a plug-in for Office developers that allows them to "create, run, and share JavaScript snippets in Excel, Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint." It is also designed as an open source software project that anyone can participate in development.
The Script Lab plug-in has proven popular with Office developers. However, Microsoft has now decided to officially take over its future development. The company said in a blog post today that it now owns the plug-in and will continue to develop and maintain it.
The bad news for many developers is that this change means Script Labs will no longer be an open source project. As a result, the plugin's GitHub repository will be archived.
The blog post stated:
We understand some of you may be disappointed with these changes, and we appreciate your feedback and support. We believe these changes will ultimately benefit the Script Labs community and provide a better experience for everyone.
The new version of ScriptLab will be missing one feature compared to the previous open source version. It will no longer have GitHubgist sharing functionality. Microsoft said it removed this feature "to better protect our users and their data." The new version will still allow developers to copy code snippets to the clipboard and share code with other developers, but from now on, scripts must be imported manually.
Microsoft will continue to host older versions of ScriptLabs for developers to export code snippets to GitHubgists. Developers can also restore code snippets from older versions that were not automatically transferred to the new version.
Microsoft plans to officially end support for older open source versions on June 3.