djfoxer/killedbymicrosoft

Part guillotine, part graveyard for Microsoft's doomed apps, services, and hardware.

Killed by Microsoft

A tribute and log of beloved products and services killed by Microsoft.

Based on Killed by Google

Contribute

To add a product, gather the following information:

• Name of Product (name)
• Launch Date (dateOpen)
• Discontinued Date (dateClose)
• Description (description)
• Link (link) - Relevant link to the source
• Type (type) - one of App, Service or Hardware

If you are not familiar with or do not want to use git, submit a new issue requesting the change. If you are already familiar with git, follow these steps:

1. If you haven't already, start by forking this repository.
2. Create a new branch in your fork. Name it using the product you want to add
3. Switch to that branch (should happen automatically if you've just created it) and open the graveyard.json file
4. Use the information gathered above to add a JSON entry in the following format (note the alphabetical order of keys):

  {
    "dateClose": "YYYY-MM-DD",
    "dateOpen": "YYYY-MM-DD",
    "description": "[Product Name] was a single sentence overview of the product or service.",
    "link": "https://any.link-to-a.source/will/work-and-wikipedia-is-cool",
    "name": "[Product Name]",
    "type": "app|service|hardware"
  }

5. Finally, create a Pull Request (PR) using the newly created branch (Important: DON'T use the master branch for the PR). Submit it with the necessary explanations.

For code contributions outside of graveyard.json, check out the Contributing Guide.

Description

The description should be a single sentence describing the product. It should begin with the products name. For example, "Google Reader was an RSS/Atom feed aggregator." It will be attached to a generated sentence like "Killed about 5 years ago, Google Reader was an RSS/Atom feed aggregator."

Please be respectful, only use past tense.

Link

Link should be a resource that mentions the discontinuation date and talks about the product. Wikipedia is perfect.

Type

The type should be either app, service, or hardware as a string.

Thanks Where Thanks is Due

I'd like to thank the Wikimedia Foundation and Internet Archive for their wonderful resources, including the ability to track down broken links, home page graphics, and screenshots of services from the past. They have been invaluable tools in gathering information and content for Killed by Microsoft. If you are able, I encourage you to make a donation to these organizations for the wonderful work they do in sharing knowledge and preserving history.