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The BaseShield App Store for Windows launches (YC Winter 08)

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Re: The BaseShield App Store for Windows launches (YC Winter 08)

#51

Post by thorax »

jwilliams wrote: post #41
swies wrote: post #12

Hi everyone! We'd like to especially encourage any news.yc readers who write windows apps to distribute them via BaseShield. Just get in touch with me at my personal email: pat (at) baseshield.com -- if you want to list it for free we'll get it up right away, if you'd like to charge you'll be at the top of the list once we get payments going. Thanks!

Not sure if you have this on your radar, but this would be useful in the corporate world. Corporates spend massive amounts on deploying desktop software - and even then it's a painful, risky process. This would assist that process in a lot of ways. (Edit: And when I say massive - I mean massive. I've seen XP deploys that were in the 10's to 100's of millions. A big chunk of this is software packaging and deploy).

It is a big marketplace with huge players (i.e. Microsoft, Symantec, Citrix, etc) already doing app virtualization/streaming. Still, since it's so large other major companies will be looking for a good platform to build upon if they can get into it, too.

I made a comment above which is probably better suited for this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=377308

Re: The BaseShield App Store for Windows launches (YC Winter 08)

#52

Post by skuzins »

halo wrote: post #49

A few comments from using it: * The installer is utterly terrible and gave me no options whatsoever like installation location or where to put icons, which is just outright obnoxious in the Windows world. * The application installs it itself in C:\Windows\system32\BaseShield\BaseShield\Data\AppStore. This is extremely bad karma - I have /never/ used a legitimate application that did this. Hiding your application amon…

This installer makes it as easy as possible to install the product without asking the user to make unnecessary decisions. The reasoning is that the few users who don't want a desktop icon are likely to be advanced users like you who can easily delete the icon.

Regarding installation in the Windows directory, flash also does this (C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash). For BaseShield there are technical reasons why some components need to be below the system32 directory.

Please use the one click uninstall to remove downloaded applications before uninstalling BaseShield. We need to make this more clear or automatic, sorry.

Feel free to contact me directly at sascha (at) baseshield.com with any technical issues.

Thanks for trying it out and for your feedback!

Re: The BaseShield App Store for Windows launches (YC Winter 08)

#53

Post by henning »

swies wrote: post #12

Hi everyone! We'd like to especially encourage any news.yc readers who write windows apps to distribute them via BaseShield. Just get in touch with me at my personal email: pat (at) baseshield.com -- if you want to list it for free we'll get it up right away, if you'd like to charge you'll be at the top of the list once we get payments going. Thanks!

Does BaseShield manage updates the way services like Steam do? (It automatically checks for updates when you open up the service, and if they exist downloads and installs them.)

Can BaseShield run .NET apps, or just native code?

Re: The BaseShield App Store for Windows launches (YC Winter 08)

#54

Post by henning »

pg wrote: post #24

I have to salute the Baseshields for their imagination. Originally the virtualization sw was going to be the product. Might still be. But then they realized that, having built it, they could basically take over the delivery of software on Windows. I was blown away when Patrick came by YC to give me a demo. I thought I was going to be seeing a demo of virtualization sw, which, frankly, is not that interesting, and ins…

Why isn't virtualization software interesting?

Re: The BaseShield App Store for Windows launches (YC Winter 08)

#55

Post by skuzins »

henning wrote: post #53
swies wrote: post #12

Hi everyone! We'd like to especially encourage any news.yc readers who write windows apps to distribute them via BaseShield. Just get in touch with me at my personal email: pat (at) baseshield.com -- if you want to list it for free we'll get it up right away, if you'd like to charge you'll be at the top of the list once we get payments going. Thanks!

Does BaseShield manage updates the way services like Steam do? (It automatically checks for updates when you open up the service, and if they exist downloads and installs them.) Can BaseShield run .NET apps, or just native code?

At the moment you have to go to an app's page and if there's an update you can get it with one click. There's a lot of potential for further automation.

.NET support is in the works.

Re: The BaseShield App Store for Windows launches (YC Winter 08)

#56

Post by pg »

henning wrote: post #54
pg wrote: post #24

I have to salute the Baseshields for their imagination. Originally the virtualization sw was going to be the product. Might still be. But then they realized that, having built it, they could basically take over the delivery of software on Windows. I was blown away when Patrick came by YC to give me a demo. I thought I was going to be seeing a demo of virtualization sw, which, frankly, is not that interesting, and ins…

Why isn't virtualization software interesting?

It's like defense in soccer. The way you can tell when it's good is that nothing happens.

Re: The BaseShield App Store for Windows launches (YC Winter 08)

#57

Post by jwilliams »

thorax wrote: post #51
jwilliams wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you have this on your radar, but this would be useful in the corporate world. Corporates spend massive amounts on deploying desktop software - and even then it's a painful, risky process. This would assist that process in a lot of ways. (Edit: And when I say massive - I mean massive. I've seen XP deploys that were in the 10's to 100's of millions. A big chunk of this is software packaging and deploy).

It is a big marketplace with huge players (i.e. Microsoft, Symantec, Citrix, etc) already doing app virtualization/streaming. Still, since it's so large other major companies will be looking for a good platform to build upon if they can get into it, too. I made a comment above which is probably better suited for this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=377308

> Still, since it's so large other major companies will be looking for a good platform to build upon if they can get into it, too.

Yup - And I don't think any of the big players have really "nailed it" by a long shot yet. Corps still spend a vast amount of time in packaging/testing.

Also, there is probably a neat open source niche there - take on a BaseShield style service, then simply pick up pre-packaged X-Y-Z, with all the updates/etc. Just as you would a mature distro.

I can see that being a really appealing model.

Re: The BaseShield App Store for Windows launches (YC Winter 08)

#58

Post by marcus »

adamsmith wrote: post #43
pg wrote: post #24

I have to salute the Baseshields for their imagination. Originally the virtualization sw was going to be the product. Might still be. But then they realized that, having built it, they could basically take over the delivery of software on Windows. I was blown away when Patrick came by YC to give me a demo. I thought I was going to be seeing a demo of virtualization sw, which, frankly, is not that interesting, and ins…

They could turn it into even more than delivering software on Windows. I'd pay to have a virtualization layer that transports settings/environments across my computers. For example, I like to set up custom keyboard shortcuts in my text editor, but every time I set up a new computer I have to reconfigure all of those settings. That shouldn't be necessary. BTW I feel like the TC article didn't communicate the key point…

Hmm, combine BaseShield with DropBox and you might have a winner...

You should also add a way for developers to bundle their software directly with the BaseShield so they can distribute the bundle as a single package on their website. This will save small developers a ton of effort in writing an automatic software updater, they'll be able to simply rely on your mechanism.

Re: The BaseShield App Store for Windows launches (YC Winter 08)

#59

Post by marcus »

Kaizyn wrote: post #37
staunch wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand the purpose of a virtualization layer on top of Windows. To maintain the integrity of your computer in the face of potentially untrustworthy third party applications. You could compare BaseShield to a dating service (app store) that enforces the use of condoms (virtualization). Not that I'm recommending the BS'ers use that analogy though.

Why would anyone need or want this? Running Windows as a standard user and/or Vista's UAC mechanism seems to provide the same functionality. I can see that the virtualization layer is more beneficial if you were trying to make it so applications behaved the same when running on Windows, Mac, or Linux. In this case, you'd be expanding on existing things like Apache's Portable Runtime, Wine or Parallels. However, the b…

Installing an app on Vista/XP almost always requires administrative privileges even if the only need stems from writing into the C:\program files\ directory.

And frankly once you give an application Admin privileges once, it doesn't matter anymore it can do whatever the hell it wants. Sandboxing is a much better mechanism from a security perspective

Plus uninstalling a program is always problematic under the existing Windows mechanisms, basically it is every programmers duty to write an uninstaller for his own software, many of which are buggy, leave trash on the computer and so on. Sandboxing an installation makes the uninstall automatically easy & fool proof.

Re: The BaseShield App Store for Windows launches (YC Winter 08)

#60

Post by Feynman »

snprbob86 wrote: post #28

Really cool product/tech! Have you looked at Softricity and their product SoftGrid? SoftGrid was a similar app virtualization platform. It was quite mature and complete. They were acquired by Microsoft a few years ago. I think some of their tech is being used in Windows 7 with the pending Application Binary Interface break.

Exactly. This product is like a very, very early SoftGrid... which has been out for a few years now. It's now called Microsoft Application Virtualization (Softricity was purchased by Microsoft about 2 years ago).

This certainly isn't anything new -- software virtualization on Windows. VMWare has a s/w virt. product, so Does Altiris, and so does Citrix Xen. I suppose since these products are mainly enterprise focused, most people never even hear of them.

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