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The Day AppGet Died

keivan.io

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Re: The Day AppGet Died

#191

Post by Conan_Kudo »

donmcronald wrote: post #187
benatkin wrote: post #24

I don't want to support this company. What are good alternatives to GitHub, TypeScript, npm, and Visual Studio Code (besides Atom)?

The smaller you are, the greater the risk of adopting SaaS like GitHub IMO, so I've used a lot of the alternatives. I try to run everything I can behind the firewall: - Gitea for a light weight Git GUI. I don't want pure GitHub SaaS and with GitLab you need to drink the Kool-Aid and marry your workflow to it. GitLab is also really stubborn about their business model and the pricing sucks once you get off the free ver…

I like your list, though I would add Pagure[1] as an option for a GitHub alternative, simply because I like the "open data" principle also applied to project data. And extensibility is nice if you want to support custom workflows. :)

[1]: https://pagure.io/pagure

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#192

Post by jonhohle »

alpb wrote: post #91

There are parts of Microsoft that understand open source. Most parts of the Windows team ain’t that (exceptions apply). Reading this saddens me a lot as he clearly got screwed. But this is why any project with momentum should consider growing its community and maybe forming a foundation. For example, Homebrew and its community/infrastructure is better than and bigger than anything Apple could ever do (and we know how…

MacPorts (né DarwinPorts) was created by Apple engineers long before the App Store existed. IMHO it’s superior to Homebrew in just about every way, existed long before Homebrew and targets the same audience (unlike the App Store which is targeting a very different population).

If you haven’t looked at MP lately, it’s worth reviewing.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#193

Post by ahelwer »

ryandrake wrote: post #172
ahelwer wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of: https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en How exactly could a PM interview process (which is just asking you to walk through a bunch of design scenarios) give a stronger hiring signal than having developed a product the company wanted to acqui-hire? Honestly somewhat insulting that they made him go through a full external interview loop. At most it should have been some informal chats…

> Honestly somewhat insulting that they made him go through a full external interview loop. Wait, what? So if someone is a "name brand" celebrity, they should get to jump the queue and coast by with an "informal chat?" How is that fair? I don't care if I'm interviewing John Carmack, he's getting the same evaluation process I would give to any other senior candidate. Software Engineering's got enough problems with int…

Technical interviews aren't a hazing ritual that we should all suffer equally out of some misplaced idea of equality. They're just one way of informing the decision of whether to hire someone.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#194

Post by tick_tock_tick »

monksy wrote: post #162
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to me, but to some people, definitely. I was about to hire a guy and discussing him with the president, it came up that he was into ASICs for crypto mining (years before it was a big thing)... president didn’t like it, figured the guy to be a get rich quick type and through his direction we passed over hiring him. Turns out in this case, it was a good call, but right or wrong it was enough to push the guy back in…

You passed up a guy that had an interest outside your business and that was extremely technical? I can understand the justifications for culture fit, however, to me it sounds like you passed over someone because he was ambitious outside of work. That's fine if that's your culture, but you should consider that as a red flag.

He was fine with it the president of his company wasn't.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#195

Post by harry8 »

chii wrote: post #161
harry8 wrote: post #139

Re-licensee all your appget code as GPL v3. Everything about it. It might put the wind up them a little. They hate GPL. Good example of the strength of the GPL for projects you want to be open and don't want mega-corp to embrace and close. BSD, MIT etc if you're fine with that being done for the project. There are other dimensions for licensing, this is just one consideration of many in your decision.

You cannot retroactively relicense code - only new code. Microsoft can just take the last version that's not GPL. This is why if i were making an open source project, it will start off with GPLv3, with a commercial paid license if anyone wants to avoid the terms of the GPL. That gives the best of both worlds - open access to anyone, and if they want to modify, they must also be willing to contribute in some way.

Absolutely they keep whatever they took under the license they took it. Obviously.

And they better have that well documented. Legal might have something to say about it, for example.

It gives then a headache and it tells them you don't like what they did.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#196

Post by benatkin »

benatkin wrote: post #24

I don't want to support this company. What are good alternatives to GitHub, TypeScript, npm, and Visual Studio Code (besides Atom)?

Thanks for the responses. I was half kidding. I depend heavily on all of these and need to double down on them! Some of the alternatives are at Facebook, which I also don't trust, for different reasons. It's hard to boycott FAAMG completely. I avoid getting hired by one of them or being locked into their proprietary technologies though. For instance I use GitHub heavily (just like I'd use YouTube if I made video content) but am not buying into all their extra features like GitHub Actions and GitHub Discussions.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#197

Post by jpalomaki »

ryan29 wrote: post #122
lukeschlather wrote: post #93

The really sad thing is that I still don't think Microsoft has actually solved the package manager problem in any meaningful way. WinGet feels like just yet another subtly incompatible package standard. I would say Microsoft should buy Chocolatey but they would probably just ruin it. (Not to say this is a uniquely Microsoft problem; it's reminiscent of the Pipenv/Poetry/virtualenv... mess in the Python community.)

I'm convinced the sole purpose of some open source projects are to be good enough to prevent other open source projects from filling the void, but bad enough to keep from competing with vested commercial interests. This might just be one of those cases. Why would Microsoft want to invest in another distribution platform when they already have the Microsoft Store where they can do whatever they want? Sure, WinGet has…

Microsoft is likely looking for a solution that would allow easy distribution of software in enterprise context without having to repackage it.

Having a widely accepted and used package format would solve that. You could just pick the package for notepad++ and others and push them to workstations via Intune.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#198

Post by acangiano »

mromanuk wrote: post #165
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could these be a second side to the story that maybe he didn’t interview well or some other reason?

So, his product is a good fit for Microsoft, but he is not. I hope that’s not the case.

It appears to be the fate of such package manager creators. The homebrew guy was also rejected (by Google).

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#199

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

monksy wrote: post #162
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to me, but to some people, definitely. I was about to hire a guy and discussing him with the president, it came up that he was into ASICs for crypto mining (years before it was a big thing)... president didn’t like it, figured the guy to be a get rich quick type and through his direction we passed over hiring him. Turns out in this case, it was a good call, but right or wrong it was enough to push the guy back in…

You passed up a guy that had an interest outside your business and that was extremely technical? I can understand the justifications for culture fit, however, to me it sounds like you passed over someone because he was ambitious outside of work. That's fine if that's your culture, but you should consider that as a red flag.

As the other guy wrote. Wasn’t my final call. I understood the presidents point. If it was just me, I probably would have given him a try.

And also like I said, it worked out in this case, the guy was a get-rich-quick type. He went to work for someone I know and didn’t last there. Sub par work, rushed and didn’t really care. That’s all besides the point.

The point that yes, your outside interests can possibly effect your hiring prospects.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#200

Post by tiles »

fenomas wrote: post #190
whoisjuan wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most cynic part of this story is sending him an email the day before the launch with a heads-up that WinGet was launching. And the icing on the cake is the "btw, we are giving you the exclusive so keep it secret". Like, wtf. He ain't TechCrunch. Why the fuck are they giving him that exclusive? Nothing yells "we stole your stuff, but dude it was open source so you really can't complain, and thanks for the idea" mo…

I mean, getting an email like that is bad, but it's better than not getting an email like that :D Last year a huge game company released something built on my tiny open-source game engine (uncredited), and I only found out about it later from a kind internet stranger. All things considered, better to know in advance so you can at least have your own response ready, so you can comment in the relevant HN/reddit threads…

But there is the promise of your OSS engine being used again, future potential. Microsoft essentially cut this person off from being involved in the future of Windows packaging and only told him 24 hours in advance. I'd need that amount of time just to process.
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