tldr; new Microsoft hearting open source
The Day AppGet Died
321–330 of 566 posts
Re: The Day AppGet Died
#322Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hopefully they also weigh in the fact that screwing developers over is terrible publicity. Assume 100k developers see this and are slightly less inclined to trust MS in future, this bad publicity could easily cost them 1mn USD plus. A good will gesture of 100k USD at the start for consulting could have saved everyone a lot of trouble. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23332123 elsewhere in this thread for an e…
I find MS seems quite immune to terrible publicity in the recent years. "But it's not the same company as before! They are doing open-source now!" yada yada
Well 1mn usd of PR damage is not a big problem when you have 100bn usd plus annual revenue. But for an individual employee it’s a bad reputation hit.
Re: The Day AppGet Died
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
Calling it "WinGet" was the real punch in the gut. Does Microsoft select for assholes or something? There's a thousand other package manager names [1] in the wild and they chose that one. So much for "developers, developers, developers"... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_package_manag...
In all fairness: - "NuGet" is super-popular in .NET circles (included in Visual Studio by default) - "apt-get" is the classic tool for Windows Subsystem for Linux So "WinGet" certainly "makes sense" as a name without being a direct ripoff of AppGet
I’m not sure you could have illustrated their point more perfectly than this. But please don’t feel like people are amused at your expense — it’s just such a perfect demonstration of exactly what they were saying.
FWIW, I agree with you that WinGet is an entirely logical choice, catchy, and ultimately unrelated to AppGet. Yeah, it may seem like the choice was made intentionally / in spite of AppGet, but anyone who knows a bit about big company dynamics will tell you that the explanation for situations like this is usually mundane, innocent, and often dysfunctional — much like a toddler. A toddler that happens to have a billion dollars and can reshape the world with its decisions, but still similar. “The name is catchy and I like it” is akin to “I see red ice cream and I want it,” and it’s probably nothing deeper than that.
It was rather unfortunate to use apt-get as an example and then say it was for Windows, though. :)
Re: The Day AppGet Died
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
Calling it "WinGet" was the real punch in the gut. Does Microsoft select for assholes or something? There's a thousand other package manager names [1] in the wild and they chose that one. So much for "developers, developers, developers"... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_package_manag...
In all fairness: - "NuGet" is super-popular in .NET circles (included in Visual Studio by default) - "apt-get" is the classic tool for Windows Subsystem for Linux So "WinGet" certainly "makes sense" as a name without being a direct ripoff of AppGet
> "apt-get" is the classic tool for Windows Subsystem for Linux
Hello darkness, my old friend…
Re: The Day AppGet Died
#325It's understandable that everybody is blaming Microsoft for the way this was handled. But let's remember that we are only seeing one side of this story, we don't know what really went on from Microsoft and the team's side there.
It doesn't really matter. What ever happened on the Microsoft side should be communicated to him. The fact that they ghosted him after flying him on site and milking him for information looks bad anyway.
What scenario do you have in mind that would make Microsoft look in a positive way in this incident?
Re: The Day AppGet Died
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can say I’m a bit upset on your behalf. Actually acquiring the code would have cost Microsoft very little money, would have ended up with a better product and also would have brought along the current user space in a very graceful manner.
They didn’t even need to acquire - MIT license means they could just fork it and use it as they preferred, keeping his name in the About screen that nobody reads. But it would have looked bad. So they did this and... it looks even worse.
Presumably they wanted to keep control of copyright, although their claim on their website is that otherwise they "couldn't build a repository of trusted applications ".
It reminds me of the way secure boot was rolled out where Microsoft said that this was all about "trust" and yet OEMs who are always keen to keep Microsoft sweet would strangely only bundle windows keys.
Re: The Day AppGet Died
#327Just don't develop large open source stuff for large companies. It's not worth it, they will always screw you if they can.
For example, make a great app for any platform and they will most likely incorporate the exact concept since it's successful.
This is why you should focus on the web, publishing on your own and then they can't simply steamroll you in the same way since the platform is open.
Re: The Day AppGet Died
#328Author 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…
Calling it "WinGet" was the real punch in the gut. Does Microsoft select for assholes or something? There's a thousand other package manager names [1] in the wild and they chose that one. So much for "developers, developers, developers"... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_package_manag...
[deleted]
Re: The Day AppGet Died
#329After reading the second e-mail it is clear that they are trying to do something "official" and that their interest in the specific person is low (to say it mildly). Full of "going-forward" and similar corporate-speak. DANGER DANGER DANGER: when someone loses natural language, he is no longer speaking for himself. What a pitiful world we live in.
I wish someone would write a serious corporate-speak dictionary, list the most used phrases and what they usually mean, explain different levels of formality etc.
Seconded. As a foreigner it is even harder to recognize such phrases for what they are and interpret them correctly.
Re: The Day AppGet Died
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
That's absurd. What he has built literally demonstrates he has the ability that the role requires - which is entirely what the entire interview loop is trying to ascertain. If you can ascertain that a person has a skillset without that loop, it is completely unnecessary.
That is simply not true, he wrote the package manager as a side project, that says nothing about if he is a good cultural fit for Microsoft.