That would not have helped MongoDB. I considered their new license, but it seemed tailored to their specifics. So maybe more research is required. Perhaps a variant of CC-BY NC would be better, but it is not tailored to code.
The P2P Foundation has some writings on licenses they label as "copyfair", "copyfarleft", and "copyjustright" https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/CopyFair_License https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Copyfarleft https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/copyfarleft-and-...
These are pretty interesting. Thanks for the links.
I like how this general direction is discussed a lot in France, and sad about learning a language taking so much effort.
Could these be a second side to the story that maybe he didn’t interview well or some other reason?
It would probably sting less if they didn't ghost him. Not giving the benefit of the doubt to Microsoft on this.
The big companies often end up ghosting the guys they don't want to hire. A long time ago, I was an intern and got fully ghosted by Nvidia. It was very annoying but my life probably worked out better for it.
Keivan obviously got screwed. Having worked at Microsoft, and seeing the nature of the bureaucracy, the only advice I would give for next time is... Just realize you can't set terms with a large company like MSFT unless you get lawyers involved early. Stealing from you outright is simply too tempting, given their resources. I noticed there were some conditions Keivan tried to set regarding the future evolution of the…
I am interested (and kind of depressed) to think - is there actually a legally defensible upper hand that exists here?
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…
The point of an interview is to figure out the capabilities of a candidate. If they are already known, it makes most of the interview process pointless.
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…
>There are parts of Microsoft that understand open source. Most parts of the Windows team ain’t that
The story goes that the new Microsoft understands open source at the top.
A windows package manager is such an essential component of the operating system that it is visible at the top. Even more, Github, npm - package managers are at the core of their strategy.
How big is the risk that the new Microsoft is just lip service and they won't respect the GitHub and npm community either?
This was definitely not a great experience, but my hunch is what happened is some higher ups decided no, they don't need to hire you, the original team tells recruiting to notify you, recruiting drops the ball somehow, team goes on with their lives believing that you were told they were no longer interested, and everyone (except you, since you never got notified) believed the whole thing was resolved. The original pe…
> some higher ups decided no, they don't need to hire you Total misjudgment on their part. Thanks to this one HN post they already lost in terms of developer good will way more than his potential salary would be. Every time anyone who uses WinGet, who read this, will think 'oh, yeah, that's the tool that Microsoft build their version of behind original author's back, while stringing him and ghosting for few months".
Yes. Microsoft really dropped the ball on this one.
So much of what Microsoft has been doing — GitHub, .NET Core, NPM, Visual Studio Code, Windows Subsystem for Linux, etc. — has been to build goodwill with “developers! developers! developers!” Taking the resources to do an acquihire (or hire + bonus) right is small relative to the PR hit.
Every time I see the “Microsoft <3 open source” stuff I get really suspicious, and this kinda confirms that I’m right to be. I’m grateful of their more open culture these days (dotnet alone is a big achievement) ... but I feel like there’s been a number of incidents like these which snap me back to reality and remind me they’re really just paying lip service to the idea and don’t truly buy into open source.
Author here, Because it's sure to come up here is a comment I wrote on Reddit that clarifies somethings, I haven't updated the original article since I'm not sure what the etiquette for updating a highly shared article is. ------ Code being copied isn't an issue. I knew full well what it meant to release something opensource and I don't regret it one bit. What was copied with no credit is the foundation of the projec…
At this point, why not keep it going? Your story is good enough reason to keep working and build a community and/or foundation around AppGet.
If the author's intention was simply to make a good package manager system, why would he? There is one now that is supported by Microsoft.
It’s mentioned in the article: “ the core mechanics, terminology, the manifest format and structure, even the package repository’s folder structure” The manifest format is particularly egregious.
Not disagreeing with you, but I think it's better to make it a little bit more clear what exactly was copied. Reading the article mentioned in the OP, the main selling point for appget seems to be that the packages are written in yaml: > Do you want to know how Microsoft WinGet works? go read the article ( https://keivan.io/appget-what-chocolatey-wasnt/ ) But that alone doesn't particularly strike me as a completely…
He's not claiming that his approach was "completely novel". He's claiming microsoft identified his way, that already existed, was the way they wanted to go, toyed with bringing him in to run it and then got overwhelmed by internal Not Invented Here / We Can Do It Better and threw him under the bus.
It's literally the new cuddly microsoft Embracing, Extending and Extinguishing this guy's work.
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.
Sure, all I said is that getting the email is better than not getting it. Obviously his case was worse than mine, the one just reminded me of the other - partly the lack of credit, and partly because the company in my case was owned by Microsoft.
Thanks for sharing. I actually wonder now if your experience happens fairly often, and Keivan's experience infrequently, though they're fairly similar circumstances. Integrating OSS or OSS concepts into a program vs a library have different implications but the engineering work required is the same. WinGet on paper, as a product, meets all of the requirements desired by the community. To appreciate the toll it takes on your competition in the OSS community is just alien compared to rules around corporate competition, where in the US there is effectively no scrutiny around imitation. It's a natural place for a team at Microsoft to land. I wish in your case that you didn't have to find out third-hand, but it does seem satisfying to think a bespoke game engine had that much reach!