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The Day AppGet Died

keivan.io

511–520 of 566 posts

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#511
post #91

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…

Nobody at Microsoft understands open source. The people who pretend to understand are just glorified sales people pretending to be developers promoting every new Microsoft product regardless how shit it is or how much better other competing products are (you know who these sales people are). Microsoft loves OSS as much as they are able to control it. They are like an abusive partner who "love you" for as long as they…

Micorsoft loves OSS as much as they are able to profit off it. Did they spend $7.5B buying github for the love of ideals?

And sure enough they understand OSS for what it is better than anyone else. Thank you, creative person, here is your exposure.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacPorts still has a number of Apple engineers contributing to it, although it is no longer an Apple-sponsored project and I have no idea if they are doing so in any professional capacity. Homebrew, interestingly, has been moving towards an App Store-esque “binary distribution platform” for a while now.

Binary distribution is not bad, it's heaps better than forcing everyone to recompile the very same software again and again on their own laptops. See also Nix.

MacPorts does not force you to do that. Homebrew on the other hand pushes you strongly towards their precompiled binaries, and they have steadily removed customizability of what gets installed on your machine as a result because they don't want to shoulder the added complexity on their side (as they'd need to provide binaries for all the options…)

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#513
post #353
post #108

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…

No experience at Microsoft but plenty with lawyers in large corps and I would rate another possibility highly, which is that the team wanted to contact him but lawyers recommended "no further contact" as the safest legal IP path. Essentially, they were trying to close the barn door on clean-rooming the software and any further conversation could leak non-open-source ip that would then bring about a liability later on…

I can see that happening at Microsoft for sure. There's no doubt legal would've been involved with the conversations and gave heads up to all people on the interview loop.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#514
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…

Virtually all open source licenses require at least the inclusion of the original copyright notice in all derivative works. Now, if the code itself were altered in superficial ways, but the structure and mechanism were essentially the same, it is kind of a grey area.

Regardless of the legal case, the idea that concerns of reputation or credit are irrelevant to open source work is a crock. People may be working on open source because they genuinely want to help others, but if you deny them credit for the work they did then you can very well expect the well of open source innovation to dry up pretty quickly. And for a company like Microsoft, reputation is exactly why they are contributing to open source in the first place.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#515
post #489
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…

As author of an open source tool that was already steatlh-forked twice without any contact whatsoever by VC-backed startups - including clearly copying text from my website/FAQ - without giving any sort of credit on the idea/implementation they used for 80% of their product but on the contrary claiming how revolutionary their products are and best idea since sliced bread, and even not satisfying the basic MIT license…

> and even not satisfying the basic MIT license terms

That's what I don't get about people who don't think this is a big deal. That a license is open source does not mean it is without conditions.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#516
post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still paying Microsoft around a hundred bucks a month to host the servers. :p

A bit OT, but do you mean the servers for AppGet?

Yeah, there is quite a bit of background infrastructure to allow checking for installed app updates, search, and automatically updating package manifests when a developer releases an update.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#517
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…

As bad as this is it would be worse to intentionally use an known inferior method for the sake of being different. This can still be corrected by giving props to AppGet. Or you can't blame companies for being companies? Hate the game.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#518
post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit OT, but do you mean the servers for AppGet?

Yeah, there is quite a bit of background infrastructure to allow checking for installed app updates, search, and automatically updating package manifests when a developer releases an update.

Are you using an App Service, and is the infrastructure documented publicly?

I'm an architect, so just keen to understand your architecture on the backend :)

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#519
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…

Very sad history. But not something new.

MS and many others don't love OSS or contribute them back. Few really do it. But instead, they are leveraging software because OSS licenses allow it. One example, see GPL, they didn't ever accept it. But they embrace any other software without restrictions on top of "OSS", if not so, they just create its own "permissive" licenses (MSPL).

Many of us are creating software even without expecting to get money back from users of any kind. Money back in many situations can be just a gentle retribution from community (E.g voluntary donations).

So, No MS, you don't really "love" OSS.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#520
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 is the guy's name?
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