A while ago, the Microsoft Garage division, which lets company employees develop new apps and services on their own free time, released Script Lab. This was an add-in for Office developers that allowed them to "create, run, and share JavaScript code snippets in Excel, Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint." It was also designed as an open source software project that let anyone contribute to its development.
The Script Lab add-in has proven to be a popular one for Office developers. However, Microsoft has now decided to officially take over its future development. In a blog post today, the company said it now owns the add-in and will continue to develop and maintain it.
The bad news for many developers is that this change means Script Lab will no longer be an open source project. At a result, the add-in's GitHub repository will be archived.
The blog post stated:
We understand that some of you may be disappointed by these changes, and we appreciate your feedback and support. We believe that these changes will ultimately benefit the Script Lab community and provide a better experience for everyone.
The new version of Script Lab will lack one thing related to its previous open source version. It will no longer have its GitHub gist sharing features. Microsoft says this was removed "to better protect our users and their data". The new version will still let developer copy their code snippets to the clipboard and share the code with other developers, but from now on the scripts will have to be manually imported.
For the time being, Microsoft will continue to host the older Script Labs version, in order for developers to export their code snippets as GitHub gists. They can also recover any snippets from the older add-in version that did not automatically transfer to the new version. Microsoft plans to officially end support for the older open sources version on June 3.
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