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The Day AppGet Died

keivan.io

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Re: The Day AppGet Died

#501

Post by foobarbazetc »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #209
foobarbazetc wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exact thing happens all the time. And not just Microsoft. Usually you sign something that prohibits you from talking about the meetings, though.

Can confirm. Heck, I’ve been given an interview day for a c-level position at a billion dollar company by the entire executive team and board only to never hear back from them again.

Yeah, I speak from personal experience.

Years later I met one of the people who screwed me over — they’d left that company by then — and they apologized.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#502

Post by thunderbong »

thePunisher wrote: post #500
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…

Exactly that: you open-sourced it so it's your donation to the world. Don't be sour if someone copies your idea or makes a ton of money from it. And what would be the benefit if Microsoft gave you credit for it? Most likely their lawyers would reject it since you may then be able to sue them for...I don't know what, but money in any case. It's a very Microsoft-thing to do to copy someone else's idea and improve on it…

I agree with this outlook. However, I don't know how I'd react if this were to happen to me. If I do something out of altruism and somebody takes it and makes money off it, I guess it leaves a bad taste? Other than that, I think this approach is done everyday by every developer, whether they take code from other softwares or from StackOverflow, very rarely do they credit or even give reference to where the code has been taken from.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#503

Post by kgwxd »

thunderbong wrote: post #502
thePunisher wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly that: you open-sourced it so it's your donation to the world. Don't be sour if someone copies your idea or makes a ton of money from it. And what would be the benefit if Microsoft gave you credit for it? Most likely their lawyers would reject it since you may then be able to sue them for...I don't know what, but money in any case. It's a very Microsoft-thing to do to copy someone else's idea and improve on it…

I agree with this outlook. However, I don't know how I'd react if this were to happen to me. If I do something out of altruism and somebody takes it and makes money off it, I guess it leaves a bad taste? Other than that, I think this approach is done everyday by every developer, whether they take code from other softwares or from StackOverflow, very rarely do they credit or even give reference to where the code has b…

My only fear would be them turning it around and preventing me or others from using the idea in the future with their big squad of lawyers. They wouldn't even need a legitimize claim to pull it off.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#504

Post by VibrantClarity »

teekert wrote: post #445
knolax wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the fact that there are five times as many Android devices as Windows devices, and the greater ease of use of Termux compared to WSL. I find that highly unlikely. Anecdotally every newbie programmer I've seen try to use WSL has just ended up installing Linux in frustration.

Termux is a terminal emulator, WSL is a subsystem. Did you try [0]? And WSL2? It's pretty compelling, I predict they will pull in a lot of Apple (who use it for the terminal) devs and make a lot of Windows first devs very happy. And there are a lot. Btw, am I downvoted because my original comment in not constructive or do people not agree with me? [0] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-terminal/9n0dx20hk...

I doubt it pulls in anybody in the unfinished state its in. WSL does not integrate very well and is miserably slow. My 13yo thinkpad runs circles around WSL running on my workstation. WSL2 is still beta, and given how buggy 1909 still is, I am not installing 2004 on anything I care about. And I recently tried Windows Terminal, but it couldn't even give me an admin prompt without giving every single session elevated privileges, so I gave up after 5 minutes.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#505

Post by GordonS »

wpietri wrote: post #483
mumblemumble wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reducing this down to a Microsoft thing is a bit hasty. Apple has done it. IBM has done it. And, when I was working for a less well-known company, I once burned a whole lot of social capital trying to prevent it from happening. At least in that instance, there was never anything overtly malicious happening. It was just your garden variety "banality of evil" situation. The existing corporate decision-making structures…

Are many companies terrible? Sure. Is that an accident? No. However, Microsoft specifically has a history of being aggressively terrible in exactly this way, which is what I was referring to. For example, the time they talked with a company about an acquisition only to ghost them and totally steal their work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_law...

They also have a more recent history of not behaving this way, and of winning back a lot of trust. This plainly isn't helping them now, but I do agree with the GP - this isn't a "Microsoft thing"

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#507

Post by haltingproblem »

eitally wrote: post #440
haltingproblem wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing the timeline. These things take far longer than anyone realizes.

Lots of times the process starts through some mid-level manager expressing interest in a possible m&a, and initiating what I'd call "casual" due diligence, along the lines of what the PP described. The issue here, from the target's pov, is that the person/team sponsoring the research/engagement isn't empowered to execute an acquisition -- ultimately, they're just performing research to build a business case that vali…

It would be very useful to know the percentage of completed deals. Is it 1% or 10% or higher? I think the number tends towards 1% rather than 10%. We (mostly) hear about successful deals and not unsuccessful ones which why this article is very valuable.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#508

Post by lliamander »

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…

What license did you release AppGet under? Almost every open source license at a very minimum requires that credit be given to the original authors. Arguably they are in a situation of legal liability (IANAL).

You don't strike me as the kind of person that would litigate such things, but I would like to think that if the right people at Microsoft became aware of such a liability, they might choose to give you credit (to be on the safe side).

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#510

Post by servilio »

macspoofing wrote: post #471
bcrosby95 wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to AppGet is not what embrace, extend, extinguish means. This strategy refers to writing software compatible with existing dominant software surrounding some shared interop (e.g. a file format they can both read, web standards they both implement, a networking protocol so they can communicate with eachother, etc), gaining market dominance, then making your once compatible software incompatible. Absolute…

Yeah, that's exactly what I had in mind. Microsoft had a very specific modus operandi in their bad old days, that was different then what they did with AppGet. Here they basically acted like a regular big company trampling over a small company. You'd be hard-pressed to find any big company that hasn't done that. I remember, for example, when Google created 'Go' lang, they didn't care that there was an existing progra…

Though I agree that this is not an example of EEE, it is still very similar to behaviour from the past:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_law...

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