Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Day AppGet Died

keivan.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 566 posts

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#381

Post by doublerabbit »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #318

If Microsoft is serious about supporting open source then this is the kind of story that it needs to stop happening. It may be perfectly legal to come out with their own version of AppGet, to base it on AppGet, and give it a name that is very close to AppGet, and if the developer wasn't a fit for Microsoft then they don't have to hire him. But behaving in this way is like biting the hand that feeds you in terms of op…

> If Microsoft is serious about supporting open source

Microsoft isn’t serious about supporting open source at all. It’s just a gimmicky ploy to get users back from Linux to Windows.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#382

Post by macspoofing »

wpietri wrote: post #346
kayone wrote: post #80

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…

Ah yes. The new Microsoft, same as the old Microsoft. I am really sorry this happened to you. On the scale of Microsoft, or even on the scale of what they're putting into this effort, it would have cost approximately nothing to give you an "acquisition" you would have been happy with. If the job didn't work out, they could have given you a fat consulting contract for a year or two. Or they just could have written you…

>Ah yes. The new Microsoft, same as the old Microsoft.

I wouldn't say that. It's a big company thing.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#383

Post by sillysaurusx »

apetresc wrote: post #22

I have a sneaking suspicion that part of the reason for the sudden radio-silence after his on-campus interview is that someone up the chain realized he is also the creator of Sonarr and just nobody wanted to take ownership of that potential liability.

Why? From the way you were talking about Sonarr, I expected it to be something more than... a bittorrent organizer. It has nearly 6k stars on github and seems wildly popular. Why would that be taken as anything but a strong "hire this person" signal?

I mean, I believe that it's possible you're correct. But this is just such a foreign "does not compute" situation to me. Is the thought process something like "Sonarr is often used to download things against copyright law -> that's a no-no -> we don't do no-no's here"? I'm trying to phrase this as positively as I can, so I apologize if it sounds like I'm belittling the mindset or something. It's not like that.

(It's mildly unfair to Microsoft to imply that this could be the reason, since as a company policy Microsoft can't show up and say "Well actually, the reason we didn't hire was because X" – and this seems like it would be an outstandingly bad decision. Old Microsoft may have made decisions like this, but in recent years they've made some pretty impressive reforms.)

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#385

Post by tiagod »

michaelt wrote: post #350
dmix wrote: post #264

Earlier 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...

> Calling it "WinGet" was the real punch in the gut. I feel for the guy, but someone who called their package manager "app get" in 2014 when "apt get" has existed for since 1998 is in no position to take umbrage at a competing package manager having a six-letter name ending in get.

How does AppGet compete with apt-get?

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#386

Post by robert_g »

ximeng wrote: post #274
ijidak wrote: post #201

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…

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 worked for a brand & marketing company for 15 years and I observed that most of my clients had pretty short memories when it came to how they felt about me. If the last few milestones were really great they quickly forgot an incident. Obviously, the more impactful an incident, the longer/more positive milestones had to be. An incident too impactful got your fired - but, in general, this was my experience.

Even in their recent history Microsoft has repeated incidents, but also has some very big positive milestones. Also, keeping in mind, some customers will only see the positive milestones.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#387

Post by fsloth »

wpietri wrote: post #349
fsloth wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry for your shitty experience. Really reminds me of Robert Kearns who's windshield patent was stolen by big auto companies [0]. Robert patented it but still megacorps tried to screw him over because they thought they could. He did win but only after an exhausting trial that took years. Really sucks when credit is not given where due. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns

It reminds me even more of Stac Electronics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_law... In 1990, they put out Stacker, which did transparent disk compression, effectively giving people twice as much disk space. It was a huge hit, so Microsoft called them up about an acquisition, entered discussion, and as part of the due dilligence process, even looked at the source code. In 1993, Microsoft relea…

Stack ranking basically chooses sociopaths over the nice guy. Applied over several years it is bound to have a statistically significant effect on who your middle layer managers are.

It does not matter if Nadella is a nice guy. It does not matter if everyone reporting to him is a nice guy. They are still forced to operate with a megacorp filled with lizard people.

On the other hand, it might be just the usual confusion that large administrative structures needed for megacorps cause.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#388

Post by LockAndLol »

doublerabbit wrote: post #381
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #318

If Microsoft is serious about supporting open source then this is the kind of story that it needs to stop happening. It may be perfectly legal to come out with their own version of AppGet, to base it on AppGet, and give it a name that is very close to AppGet, and if the developer wasn't a fit for Microsoft then they don't have to hire him. But behaving in this way is like biting the hand that feeds you in terms of op…

> If Microsoft is serious about supporting open source Microsoft isn’t serious about supporting open source at all. It’s just a gimmicky ploy to get users back from Linux to Windows.

And it's working. Linux users are even excited about WSL, cross-platform C#, Microsoft in a VM being called Linux native, github being bought, etc.

Linux users aren't more principled or anything than windows users. I'd go as far and say that people just want free stuff and some are willing to put more effort into it. We have no higher standards or morals and are no better than the windows or mac crowd.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#389

Post by hoffs »

tiagod wrote: post #385
michaelt wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Calling it "WinGet" was the real punch in the gut. I feel for the guy, but someone who called their package manager "app get" in 2014 when "apt get" has existed for since 1998 is in no position to take umbrage at a competing package manager having a six-letter name ending in get.

How does AppGet compete with apt-get?

It's not about competing, it's about naming

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#390

Post by microtherion »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #380
kayone wrote: post #80

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…

I flew to Seattle on December 5th to have a full day of interviews/meetings at Microsoft HQ. I met with four different people; three of the meetings were more like your typical interviews; the meeting with Andrew was more about what we should do once this is all over and how we would migrate AppGet’s process and infrastructure to be able to handle Microsoft’s scale. We talked about some of our options, but in general…

Yes, post-interview ghosting happens, and, I'm ashamed to admit, it happened to a few candidates that I was part of interviewing. But that doesn't make it an acceptable practice — I feel that professionalism demands to let candidates know one way or the other as quickly as possible.
Post reply on HN