3D Movie Maker It is the latest application that Microsoft has released under an open source license… and there are already a few, yes, old ones, not the ones that many of us would like. But something is something and if they do it this way it is precisely to favor that they last and can be studied. With 3D Movie Maker, however, they have done so by acceding to a community request.
For the rest, 3D Movie Maker is just one more example of a list of Microsoft applications that have followed the same path, although it is not necessary to generalize either: there are very recent, powerful and popular developments that are also open source, such as Visual Studio Code, Powershell or PowerToys, despite the fact that they have done so with these and not with others, it is always to the benefit of the company. Nothing new under the sun.
Going back to 3D Movie Maker, perhaps its name sounds familiar to you because Movie Maker has been a very popular video editor until not so many years ago, but no, 3D Movie Maker is a different and much older application. Developed by Microsoft Kids, a division of the company in charge of conceiving educational software, its original launch dates back to 1995 and its trajectory lasted barely a decade, although there were enthusiasts who continued to use it later… not to say that there are still others who do.
3D Movie Maker allowed, living up to its name, that “users create movies by placing 3D characters and props in pre-rendered environments, as well as adding actions, sound effects, music, text, voices, and special effectsΒ«, details the article of the application in Wikipedia, because there is not much more of it. Except fans, there are a few left and one of them was the one who launched the petition.
Request to which from Microsoft, but also from other parties involved and on which important components of 3D Movie Maker depend, accepted and, without further ado, the source code of 3D Movie Maker is now available in its own GitHub repository as open source. Specifically, the license chosen to release it has been the MITvery common in this type of derivatives with proprietary origins.
Hey friends β we’ve open sourced the code to 1995’s Microsoft 3D Movie Maker https://t.co/h4mYSKRrjK Thanks to @jeffwilcox and the Microsoft OSS office as well our friends in legal and those who continue to put up with me being a nudzh. Thank you @foone for the idea! Enjoy. https://t.co/6wBAkjkeIP
β Scott Hanselman πΊπ¦ (@shanselman) May 4, 2022
But don’t be mistaken: just because the 3D Movie Maker code is open source doesn’t mean you can download and compile it out of hand, much less install it like you would any other current application. It is very old code that needs to be updated to arrive there. Of course, that’s what releasing software with so many years behind it is all about.
Just keep track of the project, and sooner rather than later you’ll have an installer at your disposal like Bill Gates commands. Meanwhile, all the information about 3D Movie Maker is available in the repository linked above, including the compilation instructions and the necessary dependencies to get it to fruition.
