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The Day AppGet Died (2020)

keivan.io

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Re: The Day AppGet Died (2020)

#101

Post by gdcbe »

LeonB wrote: post #98

This caused a big splash at the time. Here’s some links on ‘what happened next’ (though I’d love to know what else has happened since!) - “Microsoft finally gives AppGet developer the credit he deserves” ( https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2020/6/2/21277863/micr... ) Microsoft response: - “winget install learning” by “Andrew” at Microsoft ( https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/winget-install-le... )

I find it a bit shallow that they throw around these words so easily. The apologies would have a bit more worth IMHO if they actually would compensate him financially for the foundational work. Sure it’s not a legal requirement but I do believe it is the right thing to do and it’s not like they would feel it…

Re: The Day AppGet Died (2020)

#102

Post by dustinmoris »

jka wrote: post #100

Note that Microsoft currently sponsors the author of AppGet on GitHub. (that began some time between 2021-04-16 and 2021-05-19 according to archive.org) [1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20210416144938/https://github.co... [2] - https://web.archive.org/web/20210519125607/https://github.co...

Prince Andrew has also just paid his victims cough a person he has never met.

Re: The Day AppGet Died (2020)

#103

Post by piyh »

john_moscow wrote: post #96
WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #28

I dunno, getting inspired and copying all the ideas, deciding that they can do a good enough job internally instead of hiring Keivan doesn’t sound like a bad thing in and of itself. It’s the stringing along that makes my blood boil. After reading things like this, I’m thinking, what I’d do differently? Maybe have them reimburse all my travel upfront. No money, no meetings. Also, bill all the meetings and conversation…

>I dunno, getting inspired and copying all the ideas, deciding that they can do a good enough job internally instead of hiring Keivan doesn’t sound like a bad thing in and of itself. It just completely kills the motivation to make any kind of system tools like this. If your tool fails, you have wasted your time. If it succeeds, the OS vendor will kill it overnight with a free knock-off, so you have also wasted your t…

You could release your code with a less permissive license (say excluding companies with a 1 trillion dollar market cap) so they at least have to play ball with you.

Re: The Day AppGet Died (2020)

#104

Post by Jenk »

chem83 wrote: post #91
derkoe wrote: post #43

Please don't use any of these. Use scoop - it just works https://github.com/ScoopInstaller/scoop No admin needed for almost all packages, "scoop update *" to update your system, authoring packages is very easy.

I like an I use scoop alongside winget after many years of Chocolatey, but there are many packages not available through scoop, mostly because there isn't a viable portable way to install them. Also, scoop does nothing to take advantage of the MSIX Containers that sandbox apps, so that they can be cleanly update and later removed. I'm considering automating the conversion of my most used apps to MSIX, so they can get…

All scoop does is extract installers/archives from the applications own portable distributions, and then create shims for them. Scoop packages aren't actually packages. They are just manifests that point to a URL to the apps download, and a list of executables to make shims/shortcuts for and that is it.

There's the nonportable bucket for apps that have er.. nonportable versions.

Re: The Day AppGet Died (2020)

#105

Post by jka »

dustinmoris wrote: post #102
jka wrote: post #100

Note that Microsoft currently sponsors the author of AppGet on GitHub. (that began some time between 2021-04-16 and 2021-05-19 according to archive.org) [1] - https://web.archive.org/web/20210416144938/https://github.co... [2] - https://web.archive.org/web/20210519125607/https://github.co...

Prince Andrew has also just paid his victims cough a person he has never met.

There's a potential interpretation of Microsoft's sponsorship as "a financial gesture to minimize a problem", sure. Without knowing more about the story, though (and there's no requirement for the author or Microsoft to share more details), perhaps we won't really know.

Re: The Day AppGet Died (2020)

#106

Post by chasil »

piyh wrote: post #103
john_moscow wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I dunno, getting inspired and copying all the ideas, deciding that they can do a good enough job internally instead of hiring Keivan doesn’t sound like a bad thing in and of itself. It just completely kills the motivation to make any kind of system tools like this. If your tool fails, you have wasted your time. If it succeeds, the OS vendor will kill it overnight with a free knock-off, so you have also wasted your t…

You could release your code with a less permissive license (say excluding companies with a 1 trillion dollar market cap) so they at least have to play ball with you.

The GPLv3 might be enough to do that, for some. It was sufficient concern for Apple, who dumped Samba, bash, and gcc.

Microsoft's CBL/Mariner distribution of Linux would be the first place to look for GPLv3, and and impacts upon their patent portfolio (I haven't read up on the patent provisions).

"Apple, a user of GCC and a heavy user of both DRM and patents, switched the compiler in its Xcode IDE from GCC to Clang, which is another FOSS compiler but is under a permissive license. LWN speculated that Apple was motivated partly by a desire to avoid GPLv3. The Samba project also switched to GPLv3, so Apple replaced Samba in their software suite by a closed-source, proprietary software alternative."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software#...

Re: The Day AppGet Died (2020)

#107

Post by 908B64B197 »

chasil wrote: post #106
piyh wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could release your code with a less permissive license (say excluding companies with a 1 trillion dollar market cap) so they at least have to play ball with you.

The GPLv3 might be enough to do that, for some. It was sufficient concern for Apple, who dumped Samba, bash, and gcc. Microsoft's CBL/Mariner distribution of Linux would be the first place to look for GPLv3, and and impacts upon their patent portfolio (I haven't read up on the patent provisions). "Apple, a user of GCC and a heavy user of both DRM and patents, switched the compiler in its Xcode IDE from GCC to Clang,…

LLVM is also more modular. The front-end and back-ends are well decoupled and it’s possible to work on them separately. Useful for a company that has to target two CPU architectures.

Re: The Day AppGet Died (2020)

#109

Post by 908B64B197 »

This story gets reposted on HN quite often, and makes it to the front page. Several things don't add up in it.

The author claims that code was copied but I looked at both repos and they share no code at all. [0] [1]

In his article, the author claims that " If I were the patenting type, this would be the thing you would patent. ps. I don't regret not patenting anything." That's really not how patents work, and looking at the repo, a second year CS student could do the same really. I don't see anything that could remotely be patented. It reads where to find the installer from a config file and determine what to do based on an enum.

He himself goes on to say he tried replicating the user experience from several existing package managers available on Linux. And Microsoft did create Nuget 12 years prior to AppGet. I’ll give some leeway to the author since I don’t think the author ever filed for a patent so he might not be familiar with the concept of prior art.

Throughout the article the author uses the term acqui-hire but it seems Microsoft was simply considering him for a PM position (and he failed the interview). There's nothing to acquire since there's no patent, no IP and no brand. Only a registered domain and what seems like an anemic userbase, if any.

I’ve done acqui-hires in the past and that’s not what the author describes. First you never deal with HR, there’s no regular interview (especially not at a hiring event and with other candidate present) and there’s always a contract. I get that the author isn’t really in a tier one market so he might not be familiar with how it’s done (or maybe customs are different where he’s from?) but what should have tipped him is that he never spoke to anyone from legal about licenses, only to an engineer who then referred him to HR…

However, the author is quite clever. Being featured in The Verge[0] and on HN's front page will probably bring a lot more eyeballs to the startups he's trying to promote. So congratulation to him for the free advertising!

[0] https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli

[1] https://github.com/appget/appget

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/28/21272964/microsoft-winget...

Re: The Day AppGet Died (2020)

#110

Post by Hakashiro »

fartcannon wrote: post #51

This is why you use, at the very least, a version of the GPL. But he used Apache. So he basically did Microsofts job for them for free.

Like someone else mentioned, this is not a source code issue. I think 90% of the people who got pissed back then thought Microsoft stole the code: get this, they didn't steal anything. One is C++ and the other is C# so it is literally impossible for a license to matter here. This would have been solved only with software patents. But I can very easily guess you're against software patents, aren't you? Or only when they're used by big evil corporations.

I hope next time you put a little thought into things you get outraged about.

Oh, and the cherry on top is you victim-shaming him. "So stupid, he used the wrong license".

You claim to with the good fight but in reality you only want to win Internet battles to enlarge your own ego.

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