Microsoft recently brought an unexpected open source release: the 30-year-old classic IRC chat client Comic Chat is now officially open source. Comic Chat was originally released with Internet Explorer 3.0 in 1996. This software presented IRC chat content through automatically generated comic-style avatars, bringing a novel social experience to Internet users at the time.
Although the software was later renamed Microsoft Chat 2.0, and was eventually officially removed from Internet Explorer 6.0. It has been discontinued for more than two decades, but its most profound impact on future generations is that it opened the era of Microsoft's classic font "Comic Sans".
Regarding the decision to open source this retro software in 2026, Microsoft officials stated that this move is to preserve this important piece of software history and provide the developer community with an opportunity to explore, learn, and perform secondary development based on it. Currently, the source code of Comic Chat is open to the public on GitHub under the MIT license.
It’s worth noting that Microsoft is providing snapshots of the original code alongside some AI-assisted modernization attempts. Microsoft engineers took it upon themselves to demonstrate how to use current Visual Studio tools to recompile this 90s-era C++ and MFC code so that it can not only connect to modern IRC servers, but also run clearly on today's high-resolution Windows devices. Microsoft emphasizes that these codes are not carefully polished re-released versions, but are practical examples designed to prove that Comic Chat can still be vibrant in modern systems. Microsoft is very much looking forward to seeing the community bring more improvements, ports, experiments and even new forms to this classic software full of affection in the future.
learn more:
https://github.com/microsoft/comic-chat