I agree that it's a total mess on all sides, but I do want to clarify that MSI is a database of what should be installed. I also want to push the note about MSI files being difficult to nearly impossible (outside of a project in visual studio) to make - I wanted to package something I wrote in vscode in an MSI and honestly I still cant figure out WiX after messing with it for hours.

The worst is install shield wrappers around MSI files. I assume it's easier to make but it makes them awful to use for an enterprise.