_Status updated on August 28th, 2026: (✅ - Done | ⌛ - In Progress | ⏭️ - Planned)_

_Status updated on August 28th, 2026: (✅ - Done | ⌛ - In Progress | ⏭️ - Planned)_

Hey everyone,

Thanks for all the feedback, questions, and ideas. We hear you loud and clear and are taking it seriously. We're entering a new phase of focused improvements over the next 6 months, including product work and foundational changes to support a more open and collaborative future.

Many of you have asked about truly open sourcing the repo. While we’re not ready to commit to a specific end date for completing all milestones, we are actively working toward it. This isn’t a flip-the-switch moment, it’s a deliberate process.

### 📆 Phased Rollout Plan
We are taking a phased approach to opening up the repo:
**Phase 1: Increased Mirror Frequency** ✅
After the WASDK 1.8 release (end of August), we’ll begin more frequent mirroring of internal commits to GitHub to increase transparency and show progress.
**Phase 2: 3rd Party Devs Build Locally** ✅
External developers will be able to clone and build the repo locally, with documentation to guide setup and dependencies.
**Phase 3: 3rd Party Devs Contribute & Run Tests** ✅
Contributors will be able to submit credible PRs for internal mirroring and run tests locally. We’re working to untangle private dependencies and make test infrastructure publicly accessible.
**Phase 4: GitHub as Center of Gravity** ✅
GitHub becomes the primary place for development, issue tracking, and community engagement. Internal mirrors will be phased out.

### 🧱 Why It’s Complex
WinUI has deep roots in Windows. Parts of the codebase touch proprietary layers that can’t be published as-is. We’re working to separate what can be shared from what can’t. This work is in progress and takes time.

### 🎯 Alignment with Microsoft Goals
We are being thoughtful about resourcing. This effort is happening alongside other critical responsibilities like security, platform stability, and support for existing products. Our current focus is on foundational work that unlocks value for contributors and increase transparency. We are aligning this work with Microsoft’s broader business priorities to ensure long-term support and impact.

### 💡 How You Can Help
If you’re passionate about WinUI 3 and want to contribute:

- Keep sharing feedback, it helps us prioritize.
- File issues with clear repro steps and context.
- Upvote issues that matter most to you with 👍.
- Interested in contributing code? Let us know!

We are working on making incremental progress and will share more soon. We will start using this [project](https://github.com/orgs/microsoft/projects/1868) board to work collaboratively with the community on product prioritization. We also commit to better wiki and transparency on monthly planning. We know this isn’t everything you want to hear, but we hope it shows we’re serious about doing this right. We’ll keep sharing updates as we go.

Thanks for sticking with us 💙

_Originally posted by @beth-panx in https://github.com/microsoft/microsoft-ui-xaml/discussions/10700_

This issue is a status announcement about phased repository opening and does not name a source file, test, or concrete change to make. Read the linked project board and the planned wiki updates for context; no completion criteria for a standalone contribution are provided here.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.