The Day AppGet Died (2020)
keivan.io
keivan.io
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 conversations. Up front, given their reputation from this story. They want to spend my time, better show how serious they are. No money, no meetings, no false hopes.
But they know young geeks can be excited that someone at THE Microsoft noticed them, like in the Hollywood success stories, and walk an extra mile. Who knows, I could have lost my shit 20 years ago. This straight up exploitation irks me to no end. Reminds me of rock stars bedding teenage fangirls and similar shit, maybe this is why.
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 time.
OS/platform vendors should know it better if they want to maintain a thriving ecosystem of contributors, but nobody seems to care anymore. Shops knocking off most successful products with store brands, Apple doing the same with some popular apps, Amazon Basics, this. And then we wonder why so many people are depressed and don't see a future for themselves anymore.
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#...
I barely grasp yacc, but I understand that a more cohesive design, less burdened by history, can be greatly effective.
There is a group that is trying to rework Linux in such a way that it can be compiled by llvm clang. I wish them the best.
If you yourself don’t need such a tool and you also don’t want to do it as an exercise of the art, then don’t do it. Spend your time on something that’s gonna bring value to you instead.
This is one of these things where you have to go, what did they loose by not investing in or hiring Keivan? Would the product be better, would it have got more traction, etc. Here's a juxtaposition: MS bought Github (yes, bigger scale) and chose not to build their own. The result was really good for MS, and honestly, not bad for Github users. MS needs to get better (and they are getting better) at using investment and acquisition instead of brainfscking and re-innovating. To be fair, maybe there's more to the story?
I'm considering automating the conversion of my most used apps to MSIX, so they can get always installed in a clean way. That may break certain apps like Steam, which need to install outside the virtual FS, but I hear MSIX supports global registry an global FS access exceptions nowadays, so not all hope is lost.
There's the nonportable bucket for apps that have er.. nonportable versions.
(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...
Framing this as becoming an employee at MSFT directly establishes a position of inferiority. This should have been about a licensing deal with the option to purchase some premium support on top to facilitate the integration. A B2B deal will never involve HR.
You don't have to be a tough negotiator yourself, but then please seek advice from a manager representing you.
It's a loss for them not him as I don't think he would have fit in such backbiting culture. The whole episode is a warning for anyone developing open source stuff and is talking to MS or any big company.
I hope I could find proper words to express the sour feelings when there's not enough credit given. It's always easy to dismiss something as: "gee, thats the obvious way to do it, there's nothing unique about it". Novel ideas always turn out to be obvious once they are implemented. The foundations of knowledge are based on the same principle. Standing on the shoulders of giants. The contrary, not giving credit, is just the nasty opposite. Appearing taller, by standing on your shoulders.
As they care next-to-zero about decent tooling, it’s no surprise they care even less about independent developers like Keivan.
I’m pretty sure Windows is going to turn into a Linux kernel with a Windows API translation layer and specialised UI system for ordinary Joes.
I think it’s probably a lot more efficient that way and Microsoft has already lost the kernel battle to Linux. With the shift to the cloud, I assume Azure will become Microsoft’s dominant revenue stream, with Office second and Windows third.
At least that my guess.
Also, sysinternals and psh alone are very compelling examples of sophisticated tooling for the Windows ecosystem. So much so that they were ported to other platforms for the Windows users wanting to explore Mac and Linux.
And while Microsoft failed so far to create a decent package management solution for Windows, the problem really isn't how to manage packages, but rather how Win32 software assumes certain levels of access to system internals. This problem was mostly solved with the introduction of MSIX, so Microsoft needs to find a better carrot to incentivize developers to deploy with MSIX so winget can work properly.
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...)
The author himself said he wanted to replicate the package managers available on Linux.
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.
"We reached out to Beigi to comment on the blog post and Microsoft’s overall response, but the developer says he’s still in discussions with Microsoft over the issue."
That seems like it happened unrelated to giving him additional credit. I wonder if they offered him something to sign a non-disparagement agreement.
Alternatively, start billing for time and travel immediately.
If they don't want to pay, tell them to meet you locally. (Let them incur travel expenses.)
This will force the company to demonstrate their intent.
If they balk at both requests, this shows that:
1. They don't have managerial approval for their escapade.
Or...
2. They intend to take advantage of you to the extent that they can.
Either way, it shows they need to get their ducks in a row. And prepare themselves to treat your time as valuable.
Here's the problem. That's sales talk. If you're not buying, either give your sales pitch or quote them for consulting.
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...
Regardless of what happened, it sounds like they left him hanging without even the courtesy of a follow-up email. Going from being ghosted to having MS release their own version of your OSS project after they've asked you a lot of technical details about how it works would leave a sour taste in anyone's mouth.
Most people don't get acquihired, so I don't blame him for not understanding how it works (nor is he from the states). What he's really talking about is being hired to keep working on AppGet, he's not talking about having the project itself acquired (since it's an OSS license).
I doubt there was intentional malice here but they really screwed up in how they communicated with him, and that can't help encourage devs to work on the windows ecosystem.
I don't think they asked him a lot. The code was all there, and WinGet doesn't share anything with it.
To me, it sounds like he failed his PM interview. That's why they stopped talking to him.
The reframing of the hiring as not part of a wider career at Microsoft seems exactly as it sounds - "ok, you don't have to do the stuff we've suggested ... But we still want AppGet".
And then this:
> We talked about some of our options, but in general, I thought everything went well.
It's quite clear that it didn't go that well, isn't it?
I'm not defending Microsoft here or suggesting that this was the exact outcome the author was seeking, but I sense a bit of naivety in interpreting what Microsoft were driving towards.
Ultimately they clearly decided the effort of a grounds up redesign / rewrite was more valuable than bring him along for the ride.
Seemed to me we need some carefully worded clause that help provide some compensation if something like this happens.
But M$ should be ashamed of themselves for not at least offering some compensation.
It's absolutely vital in any negotiation that you set boundaries and that you are are willing to walk away if those boundaries aren't respected. Especially if you really want what they are offering.
In all, it seems the ball spent a lot of the time in their court, and not a lot in his. Either they want the guy or they don't, he shouldn't have to spend months jumping through hoops for the position if they are legitimately interested in his work.
It kinda reads like a Nigeria scam: Just give us one more month and you'll get the money, I swear. It's tied up with customs right now, so if you could just do this one thing...
Whatever bureaucracy they have to deal with is entirely their problem, not his. This tedious non-committal nonsense is not something you should tolerate from anyone. Sure if it's a 2 person startup things may not be smooth, but this is Microsoft we're talking about. They should have their shit together more than that.
Within the general context of someone offering you a position based on your work, they have the privilege of talking to you and should be expected to treat you at least like a peer and not like some random job applicant desperate to get hired.
I don't mean to suggest you should be a diva about it, but that you should respect yourself and be willing to say no to anyone who doesn't.
I know that there are a lot of developers on here that disagree with me and are all in on the ‘new’ Microsoft. I can’t change your mind. Ive watched Microsoft since the early 90s though and they’ve never really changed—-and buying GitHub and releasing some things as open source doesn’t change things a bit.
Frankly I think it's only because Google, Facebook, et al. invented new kinds of evil too fast for Microsoft to keep up that they seemed warm and fuzzy at all. They're still the company that force-upgraded users to Windows 10, and they're still the company that's requiring you to have a Microsoft account for future versions of Windows 11.
On a different topic, I am using some MS APIs at work (TTS stuff) and my impression of this MS products is bad, it feels like different teams that hate each other were forced to work on this shit and some other team is forced to cover it up with documentation. I don't recommend MS stuff if you have alternatives.
Wow, I had no idea they were that good. Is there a way to get at them from a consumer level? For example, there are plenty of e-reader apps that use Google's TTS to read epub books as audiobooks. Anything similar for Microsoft or is it all on the developer side?
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service...
So I would prefer MS do this;
1 this is our 2 completly different and incompatible APIs , they might look similar but are not the same, outpiut can differ even if you send same params to each one
2 give me good error messages, like if is your fault a request fails make it clear , if is my input the problem make it clear it is me and what is wrong
Edit. I do the REST calls directly, not via an SDK and use the documentation from MS for the REST API so no SDK documentation or SDK code that hides the issues.
Separate logins incur a cost to both the service operator (who has to run multiple secure identity systems, build multiple 2FA systems, manage multiple customer service teams, etc) and the client (who has to remember multiple passwords). Consolidation of identity services is natural. One secure login is better than dozens of insecure ones.
Before you yell "password manager" admit that the average person doesn't even know what a password manager is. "Every user changes their workflow" is not a practical solution.
No, they have to keep all that data and confirm even 2 years from now that I paid for this game and migrate my logins ,
Tell me know what is more expensive
1 Keep the Mojang logins for Java edition. do nothing
2 Write ton of code to force migrate Java edition players into the XBox ,Microsoft accounts.
It is not lke I can play from Linux PC with an XBox person multiplayer so there is Zero benefit for me, just some mangers and develoeprs at MS getting busy. They fucked up my skype account move so this is why I don't like when they are trying to move me to their shit account, Now what? when they block my MS account I lose Skype and Minecraft too?
Ah yes, the old "you had a Microsoft account you didn't know about so when we merged the two any contacts you didn't have on both accounts were permanently erased" trick. Happened to me.
I want a separate login for Minecraft than for MS services, yes.
> the client (who has to remember multiple passwords)
I'd guess that the majority of Mojang accounts don't have a corresponding MS account already.
> "Every user changes their workflow" is not a practical solution.
But that's precisely what MS are enforcing - you have to migrate your Mojang account to an MS account.
In short: yes.
In long: I want separate logins for different domains. In no universe should Minecraft share a login service with Azure cloud engineering. And I shouldn't have to log in to use offline applications locally. And teams should support different logins for many accounts, like Slack figured out ages ago. By forcing changes to the login pattern for negligible to negative consumer benefit, it's clear Microsoft continues to be broken.
Microsoft and login services are terrible, and uniting them under one login to rule them all doesn't help.
Only if you are Microsoft replacing working login system with a new one costs zero.
But as a user you have no reason to change and many reasons not to do it, especially if you experienced already issues from the Skype account migration issue and you seen the news where giants ban your account for shitty reasons , so now I might lose my MS account access if my son somehow gets banned in Minecraft.
But you will say is more beautiful from an engineering POV to have one account to rule them all, my response is that is not as easy, I might already have 2 Skype accounts, 2 Minececraft accounts and 1 MS account that I use(MS might have created some other ones behind my back), it is ugly not beautifull.
What would have been beautiful maybe would have been from those smart devs to keep the old email and password login work and move their login server to Azure ,Windows and .Net if they are allergic to whatever Mojang uses, that is beautifull when dev changes help the users or don't screw with themn, changes that help devs are just for dev ego.
How quickly people forgot about mandatory iTunes activation...
> They're still the company that force-upgraded users to Windows 10
This is response for all those cries what MS should take the security of the OS seriously. No wonder what after a decade of disabled Windows Update on the endpoints (to conserve resources, to not to receive WPA update so a pirated copy would continue to work, so it wouldn't waste the precious Internet traffic and bunch of other ridiculous reasons) they took the forced approach.
...
Yes. This is the reason it is so hard to disable WU now. YOU are one of those reasons.
> forced approach only worked on the people who had auto-update enabled
Also I want to hear what kind of magic should they used to do that on people with WU disabled.
You, as the other people in this thread, are forgetting/don't think what 90% of the Windows userbase struggle to distinguish between a click and a double click.
Personally I'm not fond on how and where MS directs Windows for the last 8 years, but it's becames totally understandable when you take the sheer number (and ignorance/stupidity) of the userbase.
Did macOS ever have mandatory activation? Because I have used it for a long time and have never needed that. You need some way to get a new OS version, which was buying a new macOS version on a disk (back in the day), then on the app store, and then it was a free upgrade from the app store. But you never needed an account to run the actual OS.
About Windows 11: I switched my home desktop PC to Linux when I upgraded it early last year. I still have Windows 8 lying around mostly unused on a partition, but since it's a 32 bit version I would have to do a complete reinstall, and most of the software I'm using (including most games, thanks to Steam) runs just fine on Linux, so I haven't worked up the motivation to do it yet. And stories like this don't really increase my urge to install Windows...
I find this an interesting order to think about. Amazon has directly lead to fatalities and ( I would describe as ) an abusive work environment, but Facebook I would say has done more harm on a larger "societal shift" scale.
I suppose just looking at direct consequences of actions, I agree with your assessment - Amazon knowingly builds itself of labor abuse, and Facebook can at least lie to themselves.
I mean the alternatives are Linux, which I haven't the patience for, or Apple which is also evil but just in different ways.
(Geroffmylawn, punks.)
Every time I read of another person who built something useful, so much so that it gets recognised by big-corp X, and being called in by Google or Microsoft, promised the recognition (and pay) they deserve, then having the rug pulled at light-speed from under them, I take it personally.
I'm amazed, every time I read "The Day AppGet Died" at the restraint shown, which makes it hurt that little bit more.
Keivan should probably be a (multi) millionaire now, sitting comfortably with his family doing whatever it is they enjoy doing. Instead, someone at Microsoft used this as a way to get themselves a promotion.
Don't be fooled by the lipstick, Microsoft has never stopped being EEEvil.
Had he instead reacted to the phone call with some extremely aggressive licensing, maybe even a software patent, now he would be discussing the terms of the out of court settlement and choosing a color for individual seats in his new 7-series.
> I even smirked a bit at his misery
smirking at someone for getting rolled is low.
Is it still low when it is self-inflicted? That old fable with the finisher at the end about 'you knew me for what I was when you picked me up' comes to mind. This ending was clear from the beginning.
Microsoft is the same company who licensed Mosaic from Spyglass with the promise of a quarterly fee plus royalties and then released their version of the browser as Internet Explorer for free resulting in no royalties. Never mind the history of companies who got in bed with Microsoft and never quite recovered afterwards. Or the history of blatant ripoffs. DoubleSpace anyone?
Anyone choosing to get in bed with Microsoft at this point gets what they deserve. There was a reason why they were literally paying companies to write apps for Windows Phone.
Mate, 80% of college students don't know that.
Source: Work at a computer repair shop and see shocked faces.
They're both larval stages, just different ones.
As far as knowing about the workings of a company, I'd definitely bet on the college student. The observation in my other comment applies to general adults as well.
Ok I'll stop taking the joke too seriously now :P .
'To whom it concerns, you guys are shitty so I'm cancelling services.'
Microsoft - You have many alternatives to Microsoft software. Linux, Libre Office, Java, Python, IntelliJ, ... pick one, or more.
Amazon - there are so many other stores. And cloud providers if you are into that.
Netflix - just another streaming service. You can decide how to consume media in many different ways.
Google - Mail you can host anywhere, it's not like Gmail is special. Online productivity suites are not that rare as once. If you insist on Youtube you can use it without an account, Android with fake account.
If you find yourself you can't switch, you are into much bigger trouble. It's ok to be burned once, but next time you start you new SaaS startup, think twice do you want to depend on specific company for all your needs.
Giving up on Netflix and Spotify was much less difficult than expected.
To be fair, AppGet was never really that popular, and Microsoft's replacement is even less so. I'd be surprised if anyone got a promotion based on their WinGet work. There has been no significant adoption of WinGet in the market. They're lucky Microsoft doesn't dissolve the team. We use Chocolatey instead, which I think is more popular (but still not very popular).
I have no horse in the race, nor do I know anything special about this situation, but it's fairly clear to me that the author failed the interview. I don't know if he understands that and is trying to downplay it, or if he doesn't realize that's what happened. That's why everything dried up after the interview, and why the followup says the position "didn't work out."
Because it's an terrible implementation of a package management. Don't get me wrong, it's better than nothing but still...
For instance:
- we can't pin packages (there's an open issue for God knows how long) Problem with that is that if you do "winget upgrade --all" it will upgrade all your programs even those that you don't want to upgrade. The alternative is simply upgrading one by one.
- Some programs have a problem with their version (GOG Galaxy for instance). Winget simply doesn’t know that there’s no newer version available and keep trying to upgrade everytime you do “winget upgrade –all”. This, in turn, make the previous point more annoying as I can’t say to winget ignore “GOG Galaxy” and upgrade all the other packages.
- Some programs are downloaded from websites that are probably heavily throttling downloads from winget, this make downloading qbittorrent (20mb) takes a LONG time and usually failing.
I have no idea of how to fix these issues as I'm just a user but there's a stark difference between using windows winget and apt or pacman.
Well, TBF, that's exactly what "winget upgrade --all" sounds like it should do.
What winget upgrade —-all *should* do is to follow this common sense and do a upgrade all /minus package that the user choose not to upgrade.
This was resolved in the latest preview release (well, the PR merged a couple months ago, but they seem to release once every million years). If you want to upgrade to preview temporarily it will still automatically update to stable releases.
https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/releases/tag/v1.3.43...
Instead, they made it into some sort of interview, got all of his input then went off and copy-paste'd the code (an exaggeration) into WinGet and ghosted him.
To add insult to injury he got a nice little "fuck you" the day before they released it.
I’m not so sure. The interview could have been a pretense to get more information, e.g. strategy for future development.
Also, in a sufficiently machiavellian environment, candidates can easily “fail” interviews by just seeming smarter than the hiring manager, scaring that manager into thinking they’ll be leapfrogged.
What's important here is how he "failed the interview": He was probably never going to pass it. They'd already "failed" him beforehand for being an Open Source freak; the whole charade was just to string him along.
If anything, the reason feedback took forever to him was because someone may have asked for an exception to the interview failure so they could hire him. Large companies are behemoths and things do go wrong, mistakes are made, and Microsoft did own up to it in this case (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/winget-install-le...) but open source did not play a part in it.
Source: myself, I worked at Microsoft in a past life and did many interviews. No one cares about someone's stance on open source anymore.