The state of the Windows API Code Pack

[ForNeVeR]

Disclaimer

I don't know if this is the right repository for this kind of discussion, so please point me to the right place if this is not one. Though, I believe that the Windows Desktop SDK repository is one of the best places for this particular question, and I'm sorry if it's not appropriate to start a discussion like this here.

Description

There's a well-known (to fellow Windows .NET developers) Windows API Code Pack, which has a history.

It was published (and open-sourced) by Microsoft back sometime in 2010 (I wasn't able to quickly find the original version; the earliest mention I found is from 2010). Eventually, due to the reasons unknown (and people are still asking the question), it was just shut down. All its mentions are removed, the code itself is no longer available, the official archives are dead. It was available under the URL https://code.msdn.microsoft.com/WindowsAPICodePack

The package is still very useful (e.g. folks are constantly asking for the common file open dialogs and are being pointed to the package), but it has no official home, the licensing situation is vague (because even if we have the source archive preserved, the license isn't available from any official source), and we have to rely on possibly outdated/invalid information from the Web Archive).

The current situation looks harmful to the whole Windows .NET ecosystem. There're two popular active forks of the project (which claim to be based on the original source), which are uploading their stuff to NuGet:

• https://github.com/aybe/Windows-API-Code-Pack-1.1
• https://github.com/contre/Windows-API-Code-Pack-1.1

NuGet is littered with packages having similar names, some of which have "Microsoft" prefix, though (as far as I was able to tell) none of the authors have any actual relationship with Microsoft. One day, someone will start uploading something harmful (or just of bad quality) there, and people will start using it, since there's no official source of truth, and not a single word on the matter.

Action required

I propose that, considering the current situation, we should, first of all, have a clarification on the licensing of the library, and then maybe move one of the forks under .NET Foundation organization, make it the main source of truth for this code, and publish an official NuGet package.

[MagicAndre1981]

I use this one, as it gets regular fixes and has .net 5.0 support