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The Day AppGet Died

keivan.io

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Re: The Day AppGet Died

#531

Post by alien_ »

palerdot wrote: post #496
alien_ wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/AutoSpotting/AutoSpotting

Thanks for sharing ... This looks great and I hope you get somewhere nice with this project ...

Thanks!

My former employer is still using it and saving yearly multiple times my previous 6 digit salary, so I got a nice promotion out of it before I left.

It also helped me get my current job at AWS(pretty much half of the interview I was just talking about how I built it), and I now make some $500 monthly (before tax) from a few users who pay for official binaries.

I'm now only working on it occasionally, just enough to maintain this income stream, but previously I put a lot of time and effort into building it.

My motivation to work on it plummeted when I saw those companies reap the benefits of my hard work without giving anything back.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#532

Post by thePunisher »

kgwxd wrote: post #503
thunderbong wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That would be very difficult since there would be prior art.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#533

Post by pdonis »

lostmsu wrote: post #177
pdonis wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There have been quite a few larger products, where Microsoft failed spectacularly. Sure, but not because of failure to reverse engineer someone else's product.

Right. That was the point: it is not enough to just understand how something was made. You have to be able to recreate it too. And building a similar system in just a bit different way to avoid potential copyright or patent claims is hard. If the system is complex, it is hard squared.

> it is not enough to just understand how something was made. You have to be able to recreate it too

I meant to include both in "reverse engineering".

What I was trying to say was that the large products where MS has failed spectacularly don't seem to me to be products from some other company that they reverse engineered. They seem to me to be products MS thought up itself. MS is better at co-opting ideas invented by others than at inventing its own.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#534

Post by kayone »

GordonS wrote: post #518
kayone wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

I wrote a brief description a while back here, https://github.com/appget/appget/issues/24#issuecomment-4648...

after all this is over, I'll probably do a write up of hall it all worked behind the scene + all the server code.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#535

Post by logicalmind »

pixelmonkey wrote: post #378

I've been learning a little bit about "the new Microsoft" and its new relationship with open source, and I think I get it now. MSFT is treating open source communities and free F/OSS code contributions the way they might have treated blogging and IT forums in a prior era. It's "developer community" and "power user" engagement. It's a hybrid product management and marketing function. In this particular scenario, the w…

If you want to see what Microsoft thinks of open source and contributors, then all you have to do is read the license they want you to agree to before doing so:

https://opensource.microsoft.com/pdf/microsoft-contribution-...

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#536

Post by MattSayar »

bitlevel wrote: post #418
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…

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.

I know it by a different name

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlwwVuSUUfc

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#537

Post by wpietri »

GordonS wrote: post #523
wpietri wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But let's consider why we saw a change for a while. In their heart of hearts did they reform? Did they really see the error of their ways and vow never to misuse their market power again? Many people seem to think so. I think the simpler explanation is that US v Microsoft and other anti-trust action combined with their declining fortunes scared them for a while, causing them to perform goodness. But now that th…

I think the reason for the change was 2 things. Firstly, with the shift to the cloud, cross-platform was inevitably going to become more important - Linux is much loved in the server space. Secondly, they realised the importance of developers in the shift to the cloud - their cloud, Azure, and also their DevOps tooling, Azure DevOps (and later Github). Do I think their positive moves were altruistic? No, of course no…

If the "goodwill" is the result of calculated manipulation, which is what even you seem to believe, then I would hope that invalidates it thoroughly.

As to the reason for the change I think we're saying the same thing. If they could have snuffed out Linux, they would have. Their ongoing antitrust problems helped prevent that, allowing the Linux ecosystem to flourish. They have since been unable to abuse the power that they no longer have.

Again, time will tell if you're right thinking that Microsoft is merely just as awful as other large companies. But reasonable people can assume that it will be just as bad as before if they regain their power.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#538

Post by tracker1 »

munchbunny wrote: post #69
tracker1 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is when MS decides they aren't going to hire, they cut off all communication, total lot drop. Sometimes at their own campus, no feedback at all. It's really an angering experience imo. I mean, I get it from a litigious mindset, but still not very humane.

That's not true, usually you'll get a message from the recruiter. You might not get interview feedback, but you'll know if you got turned down. Even if you don't, you submit applications through a recruiting site, and it tells you the current status of your application. It'll tell you if the application was rejected.

I waited a week and a half with no reply/response from anyone... It was the third email a few weeks after that finally got a dismissive response. This was around 2004 iirc, not sure if it's changed significantly since, or when your experience is related or where/what you were interviewing for.

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#539

Post by simonblack »

Just in case you weren't around in the early 1990s, what happened to you was practically identical to what happened to Stac Electronics. They had a hard-drive compression program, got into 'negotiations' with Microsoft, then nothing. A little while later, Microsoft incorporated their DoubleSpace into MSDOS.

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Re: The Day AppGet Died

#540

Post by kgwxd »

thePunisher wrote: post #532
kgwxd wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That would be very difficult since there would be prior art.

They don't have to win the case, just the power of fear.
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