At the Build 2025 conference, Microsoft opened sourced many apps and tools, including a new command line text editor for Windows called Edit.
Open source software may not be able to directly generate revenue from the company, but it acts as a form of market research and as a funnel to paid applications and services. By contributing to the open source community, Microsoft gains valuable knowledge and product suggestions, as well as ideas for future directions.
Edits will be installed by default on Windows via the Windows Insider program starting this summer. Run the command “Edit” to allow developers to edit files directly on the command line. The goal is to minimize unnecessary context switching and allow developers to stay in their current flow, Microsoft says.
Elsewhere, Microsoft is the open-sourcing GitHub Copilot for VS Code, an assisted coding extension for Visual Studio code. Over the next few months, the AI-powered features of GitHub Copilot Extension will be migrating to the VS Code open source repository.
Finally, Windows SubSystem for Linux (WSL) is an open source feature that allows users to run Linux environments directly on Windows systems, so Microsoft says. This allows developers to access the source code and make the necessary changes to a particular use case.