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The Day AppGet Died

keivan.io

411–420 of 566 posts

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#411
Typical Microsoft. If they're interested in what you're doing, be acquired or be crushed. Microsoft loves opensource; they love linux too. Like I love mashed potatoes : well cooked, thinky crushed then with some cream on top.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#412
post #385

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?

I thought AppGet was a pun on apt-get and thought the name was clever.

I thought it was better named than Chocolatey or Scoop.

Edit: plan > pun. (no idea why I wrote plan, i think I wanted to write play)

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#414
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…

Oh man, having bad flashbacks with that and SuperStor.

I think I had a 200MB hard drive at the time.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#415
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…

Cmon, I live in a country where there is a legal obligation to inform candidates whether they passed the interview. It's not a very high bar. We shouldn't be accepting this kind of behaviour - especially from someone as renowned as Microsoft. It would have been absolutely trivial for them to send a polite three sentence email when they made their decision.

I mean, not to shoot the messenger, you're right, that's exactly what it meant, but it isn't acceptable behaviour.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#416
post #233
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post was trying to imply that because the project was open source, it's a free-for-all for microsoft to just take and modify for their own needs. And that is exactly what happened.

Honestly the tech innovation of AppGet while good, isn't something groundbreaking. Manifests have been used by other package managers in the past. Yes it's stinks he didn't get more credit, but IMO it's blown out of proportion.

Microsoft shill

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#417
I know this might be unpopular with OSS idealists, but I wonder if it might be time for a new license, or indeed if there are already (small 'o') open source licenses that would help with this sort of things.

What I'm thinking of is a license almost identical to the MIT and/or Apache 2.0 license, but with a clause that prohibits mega-corps from wholesale rebranding and using your code.

I have a few OSS projects myself, and help maintain a larger one, and I love the spirit of OSS, so I'm a little split on this one. But I don't really think Microsoft's actions here are truely in the spirit of OSS. Yes, the license allows it, but is it aligned with the OSS ethos? Is it "right"?

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#418
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…

It would appear that you have been 'Sherlocked' (https://www.howtogeek.com/297651/what-does-it-mean-when-a-co...) but by Microsoft.

Looks like all the bigger companies are doing this now.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't think of a more wasted effort then trying to compete with maintaining a package manager in your spare time than a clone from the OS vendor who can out resource, outspend, out market, out evangelize, out reach you, etc. It would a futile endeavour, a realization acknowledged by the author, any further dev cycles on it would be wasted & are better spent elsewhere.

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 might be wrong, but I read this as an apology from a PM that tried to get something done for the guy he based work off, but ended up never managing to because BigCorp got in the way. He might have felt bad about it and clear part of his conscience, or try to soften the blow.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#420

I know this might be unpopular with OSS idealists, but I wonder if it might be time for a new license, or indeed if there are already (small 'o') open source licenses that would help with this sort of things. What I'm thinking of is a license almost identical to the MIT and/or Apache 2.0 license, but with a clause that prohibits mega-corps from wholesale rebranding and using your code. I have a few OSS projects mysel…

> with a clause that prohibits mega-corps from wholesale rebranding and using your code

That didn't happen in this case. They took the ideas, and took his knowledge by leading him on and interviewing him for an acqui-hire.

They didn't take his code (in C#) and rewrite it in to C++.

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