3 ms·

Looking at https://keivan.io/the-day-appget-died/ https://keivan.io/the-day-appget-died/ and https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/milestone/5 https://github.

by chx 6y ago

Looking at https://keivan.io/the-day-appget-died/ https://keivan.io/the-day-appget-died/ and https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/milestone/5 https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/milestone/5 (seven months late and that's just 0.3) with a nod at https://i.imgur.com/gADLhSW.jpg https://i.imgur.com/gADLhSW.jpg I'd say someone recognized the lack of package managers at Microsoft and various underlings came up with solutions. One was the Andrew mentioned by Keivan who basically wanted to acquihire Keivan/AppGet but he lacked the clout to do so. Another was a manager, let's randomly call him Bart who decided to build an in house solution, grabbed a few people and created WinGet. While Andrew couldn't make it, Bart also didn't manage to secure enough funding to reach his goals so we are now in this cursed state where AppGet is gone, and Bart's team is very slowly moving along so no good solution is available and frustrated by the lack of results Bart might get shut down any minute...

JediPig 6y ago
nor will it be the last time this giant, like many others do the what i call the "ole" shaft in the exit area. My best advice, after learning after getting screwed by MS and Oracle. Lets call him Jim, partner of mine, and a fictional company lke Krackle.. They sued until discovery found something the engineers did..... running our version while developing competition. They sued because ours "processed too good" and "we had to copy them". Once the judge was showed the emails where they were DISASSEMBLY the pcode and sharing the map. We got a fat check, and offered to buy us out. Jim and I retired from a 39k c app that till this day, most, if not all hospitals use
john_moscow 6y ago
That's what you get when you stop enforcing antitrust laws. Microsoft can make WinGet free to the end user because they are subsidize the development from the sales of Windows itself. Because it's not a major niche, they don't care much about it and won't assign much resources to deliver an excellent product. But having them maintain a free solution bundled with the OS discourages anyone else from stepping into the niche with a much better to use paid tool. So it's a stalemate now. It's a small example and the annual market for Windows package managers could be less than a single team's budget, but the same holds for virtually every niche these days. Subsidized solutions offered by the pre-2008 companies with little chance for independent competition. We are not going to remain an innovative economy unless we find a way to crack down on this behavior.
- chalst 6y ago
  I don't think there's a problem that an antitrust intervention could help solve, rather a lumbering hierarchy where the people who make the decisions don't understand or care enough about the niche. Microsoft wants to attract developers from other platforms: Windows native code supporting no package managers that are all of good, general and fast is just the kind of situation that will make developers who come from other platforms hate the time they spend with theirs. Microsoft's real interests don't seem to be the problem here: Windows losing its best package manager only hurts what they want to achieve.
zargon 6y ago
Source for that organizational chart: https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts
- chx 6y ago
  Thanks, the URL I had is long dead https://bonkersworld.net/2011/06/27/organizational-charts https://bonkersworld.net/2011/06/27/organizational-charts and so I wasn't even sure whether that's the original author -- for all I know the website could've been replaced by someone else's since. Thanks, we should always give credit where credit is due.
mgrandi 6y ago
serious question, what is stopping someone from restarting AppGet? all the source code and manifests seem to be on github, is there some backend server that isn't open to the public?
- chx 6y ago
  If Microsoft shifts gears they will annihilate you. Would you want to work on something with that threat looming over your head? It is a no-win situation: if you do nothing, MS will continue doing little, if you push, then you risk them getting their ... together making your work irrelevant. I put this paragraph here because I don't want people pointing at this a year from now "you were wrong, we did nothing and see WinGet is still nowhere".
908B64B197 6y ago
> who basically wanted to acquihire Keivan/AppGet Keivan is the only one who ever mentioned "acquihire". Microsoft never did so... because there really was nothing to acquire! Keivan made grand statement about his idea being patentable but that he, in the goodness of his heart, decided not to patent anything but... package managers have been around for a long time now so there is really nothing to patent. Reading through the AppGet code, it basically reads a XAML config with install instructions. CS101 project basically. Seems like he failed his PM interview pretty bad. Now, all that whining did give him a lot of exposure for his startup here on HN...
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  If he can manage CS101 and Microsoft can't, then maybe "nothing to acquire" is the wrong conclusion.

by chx 6y ago

JediPig 6y ago

nor will it be the last time this giant, like many others do the what i call the "ole" shaft in the exit area. My best advice, after learning after getting screwed by MS and Oracle. Lets call him Jim, partner of mine, and a fictional company lke Krackle.. They sued until discovery found something the engineers did..... running our version while developing competition. They sued because ours "processed too good" and "we had to copy them". Once the judge was showed the emails where they were DISASSEMBLY the pcode and sharing the map. We got a fat check, and offered to buy us out. Jim and I retired from a 39k c app that till this day, most, if not all hospitals use

john_moscow 6y ago

That's what you get when you stop enforcing antitrust laws. Microsoft can make WinGet free to the end user because they are subsidize the development from the sales of Windows itself. Because it's not a major niche, they don't care much about it and won't assign much resources to deliver an excellent product. But having them maintain a free solution bundled with the OS discourages anyone else from stepping into the niche with a much better to use paid tool. So it's a stalemate now. It's a small example and the annual market for Windows package managers could be less than a single team's budget, but the same holds for virtually every niche these days. Subsidized solutions offered by the pre-2008 companies with little chance for independent competition. We are not going to remain an innovative economy unless we find a way to crack down on this behavior.

chalst 6y ago
I don't think there's a problem that an antitrust intervention could help solve, rather a lumbering hierarchy where the people who make the decisions don't understand or care enough about the niche. Microsoft wants to attract developers from other platforms: Windows native code supporting no package managers that are all of good, general and fast is just the kind of situation that will make developers who come from other platforms hate the time they spend with theirs. Microsoft's real interests don't seem to be the problem here: Windows losing its best package manager only hurts what they want to achieve.

zargon 6y ago

Source for that organizational chart: https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts https://bonkersworld.net/organizational-charts

chx 6y ago
Thanks, the URL I had is long dead https://bonkersworld.net/2011/06/27/organizational-charts https://bonkersworld.net/2011/06/27/organizational-charts and so I wasn't even sure whether that's the original author -- for all I know the website could've been replaced by someone else's since. Thanks, we should always give credit where credit is due.

mgrandi 6y ago

serious question, what is stopping someone from restarting AppGet? all the source code and manifests seem to be on github, is there some backend server that isn't open to the public?

chx 6y ago
If Microsoft shifts gears they will annihilate you. Would you want to work on something with that threat looming over your head? It is a no-win situation: if you do nothing, MS will continue doing little, if you push, then you risk them getting their ... together making your work irrelevant. I put this paragraph here because I don't want people pointing at this a year from now "you were wrong, we did nothing and see WinGet is still nowhere".

908B64B197 6y ago

> who basically wanted to acquihire Keivan/AppGet Keivan is the only one who ever mentioned "acquihire". Microsoft never did so... because there really was nothing to acquire! Keivan made grand statement about his idea being patentable but that he, in the goodness of his heart, decided not to patent anything but... package managers have been around for a long time now so there is really nothing to patent. Reading through the AppGet code, it basically reads a XAML config with install instructions. CS101 project basically. Seems like he failed his PM interview pretty bad. Now, all that whining did give him a lot of exposure for his startup here on HN...

Dylan16807 6y ago
If he can manage CS101 and Microsoft can't, then maybe "nothing to acquire" is the wrong conclusion.