Microsoft now credits maker of AppGet but offers no apology

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-credits-maker-of-package-manager-it-copied-for-windows-10-but-offers-no-apology/

by crones • 6 years ago

282 129 6 years ago

zdnet.com

mikece2• 6 years ago

I am curious: why would I want to use AppGet or WinGet instead of Chocolatey?

And is the assertion that Microsoft took code from AppGet as part of WinGet? The fact that the word "copied" is in quotes makes me wonder what the beef is... and did anyone ask the APT team if they feel ripped off by the existence of Windows package managers?

ak392• 6 years ago

>I am curious: why would I want to use AppGet or WinGet instead of Chocolatey?<<

https://keivan.io/appget-what-chocolatey-wasnt/

mikece2• 6 years ago

"AppGet uses YAML files instead of scripts; we call them manifests. Using data over scripts just seemed like a much better choice."

So it's an opinion, one that the WinGet team decided to go with as well. Okay... not sure that's massively compelling just because the author says so but I'm willing to be convinced. I guess I need to go back and dig deeper on this scripting being referenced in Chocolatey: isn't it just powershell scripting?

JamesBarney• 6 years ago

WinGet is written in c++ and a AppGet is written in c# so the code isn't copied.

I think his complaint is they copied the functional interface.

KayL3• 6 years ago

his point: Interview + YAML = Copied

"We have already talked with a few of the well-known package manager teams...." https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/windows-package-m...

In my point of view, they do the comparisons and created their own product. The interface is too basic.

thePunisher2• 6 years ago

That's no crime. If developers wouldn't be allowed to do that we'd have a major crisis on our hands.

The worst infringement as far as I'm concerned is that MS tricked him into giving up all his secrets before they implemented it themselves.

If Microsoft ever came to talk to me about one of my projects the only thing I'd tell them is: "How much?" (are you willing to pay for it).

loufe• 6 years ago

If you read the Github thread it's mentioned that it's not just the interface, but the code structure, and design theory as well.

hajile3• 6 years ago

If Google v Oracle is ultimately determined in favor of Oracle, copying the functional interface could wind up costing them a ton of money.

tsumnia• 6 years ago

And is the assertion that Microsoft took code from AppGet as part of WinGet? The fact that the word "copied" is in quotes makes me wonder what the beef is...

Agreed; reading the article makes it sound (to me) like they copied his "idea" rather than actual code.

tzs• 6 years ago

I am curious: why would I want to use AppGet or WinGet instead of Chocolatey?

Better names?

As someone who does not install a lot of things on my Windows systems, if I got a package manager named Chocolatey to install something I'd have trouble remembering the name the next time I want a package manager six months later. I'd remember that I already installed a package manager, but not what it is called.

AppGet I'd remember. I might look for it as app-get the second time, but would quickly remember it is spelled a little different than the Debian program. WinGet would be a little harder, but I think I would remember it.

Seriously, I'm getting a bit tired of programs whose names have nothing even remotely apparently related to with what the programs do.

While on a bit of a rant about names, what the heck is up with the naming of backup programs? There is Duplicacy, Duplicati, and Duplicity. Part of the reason I went with Arq was I kept getting those three confused with each other when reading reviews and comments.

Sure, you might not immediately think "backup" when you hear the name "Arq", but at least there is not also an "Ark", "Arque", and "Ourk" backup too.

itsspring• 6 years ago

Is there a way to protest this?

Perhaps devs should upload every package with a readme that includes a reminder for developers, something like:

"This package is dedicated to Keivan Beigi. Read more about what Microsoft did to Kevin here: thankyoukevin.com"

Any better ideas?

zxter• 6 years ago

Submitting PR to WinGet's repo for changing the name to AppGet, also crediting original author.

Kenji• 6 years ago

Yes. Stop using Windows. Contribute to FOSS alternatives. License your code GPL3. Don't ask someone else to change. Be the change.

gowld3• 6 years ago

Economy of scale means freeloaders are too expensive a burden, preventing keeping up with closed source, for projects of unbounded complexity, like OS ecosystems. Sad but true.

benatkin3• 6 years ago

It sounds like an apology to me. What's missing, just the words "I'm sorry?"

ak392• 6 years ago

Sounds like an apology. That's ok, I suppose. But I'd personally also love to see Microsoft pay Keivan for his contribution. It needn't be huge sums but something. No, not because it's the moral thing to do, but for the sake of Microsoft's GitHub and their open source community strategy itself. Keivan's project is exactly the type of projects Microsoft wants to encourage from their GitHub & open source endeavours for the eventual benefit of Microsoft. Paying Keivan something for his contribution to WinGet will really incentivise others to want to contribute to the ecosystem.

jka• 6 years ago

Although I'm sure you have good intentions, handing money to people after you make a mistake isn't always the best way to make amends (or to incentivize people).

bzb3• 6 years ago

Then Google should pay Oracle for using the Java API :')

dman• 6 years ago

Given that the person who wrote the apology has apologized for the apology not being upto the mark, I think we can say that the apology missed the mark.

https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/issues/353#issuecomm...

benatkin3• 6 years ago

That comment was before the message that this article is about. Later on that page [0]: it links here: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/winget-install-le...

So far I don't see @aclinick or @kayone addressing the later note. I see 15 thumbs up and 3 thumbs down plus a thumbs down from ZDnet. I happen agree with the 15 thumbs up that the blog post is a step in the right direction. It's not what is typically considered to be a non-apology.

0: https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/issues/353#issuecomm...

tasogare3• 6 years ago

License is Apache 2.0 which does not require acknowledgment. I’m always surprised when open source project creators are complaining about a legal move made by a company related to their project: they allowed it in the first place. If they wanted more, like citation or financial advantage, they had the choice to force interested parties to comply by choosing another license. Betting on companies goodwill is risky...

ghaff• 6 years ago

There's a matter of politeness/good practice that goes beyond license terms. And in some contexts (e.g. academia) there's absolutely an expectation that you cite others' work whether or not you're legally required to do so.

That said, I basically agree with you. If you have specific expectations of whoever uses your code, you should absolutely pick a license that requires the behaviors you want. (With the understanding that fewer people may use your code as a result.)

tasogare3• 6 years ago

Of course there are implicit expectations and etiquette. What I’m saying is that corporations are less likely than individuals to follow them so if one doesn’t want to be screwed they have the opportunity to do it with the license.

You speak of academic code, and precisely some projects require (or at least ask for) citations in their license file if use in a research context.

viraptor2• 6 years ago

There's a difference between ethical and legal. You can do a lot of things that don't break any law but make you a terrible human being.

Of course you can copy someone's design and not acknowledge it unless it's patented. You're going to be a dick then, not a criminal.

jdmichal• 6 years ago

Is it really being a dick when someone explicitly, through choice of a license, allows it? What is this post from Microsoft except an explicit and public thank you? Which seems like it should certainly appease the "not a dick" criteria to me...

beervirus• 6 years ago

Microsoft isn’t a human being, terrible or otherwise.

bluGill• 6 years ago

You choose no acknowledgement licenses when your goal is to quietly make the world better. Thus what Microsoft did was a feature not a bug.

Of course if your goals are different it is the wrong license, but that isn't the fault of the license or Microsoft from using it as intended.

Note, I have not read the apache license in a while. I might not have the exact details of what it encourages wrong. The point should stand anyway.

secondaryditto• 6 years ago

given that the code wasn't actually forked in the first place, it probably wouldn't have mattered anyway. no?

franciscop3• 6 years ago

I am going to go against other answers and say that legally OR morally you don't need to acknowledge the author if you don't want to. But that wasn't the issue here at all, the issue was Microsoft interviewing the candidate (to pick up his brain?), then ghosting him, THEN copying his solution. It's about how they treated the original author, not about just copying the solution.

tasogare3• 6 years ago

Actually I agree that Microsoft move wasn’t fair to the author. The thing is, we read more and more posts here about people disappointed by open-source, with project they started and put lot of effort into and then didn’t get anything back when a company serves itself. But that what they allowed to happen in the first place. If I were to open source the main project I’m working on, I would think for a while to the kind of licensing (possibly dual) that would allow me to reap some benefits in case of success, by the project itself or its use by a company.

andarleen• 6 years ago

Good point - wondering if open source projects that copy commercial products should be liable for copyright infringement.

toyg• 6 years ago

It's not about the license, it's about the whole conversation, job-offer and so on.

rectang5• 6 years ago

License is Apache 2.0 which does not require acknowledgment.

Incorrect. See clause 4, especially 4.c.

https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html#redistribut...

c. You must retain, in the Source form of any Derivative Works that You distribute, all copyright, patent, trademark, and attribution notices from the Source form of the Work, excluding those notices that do not pertain to any part of the Derivative Works; and

In the case of WinGet attribution was theoretically not required because the code was not copied directly, so a copyright license was not needed and the Apache License did not come into play. (Of course if AppGet's creator had Microsoft-level lawyering available, he could quite possibly persuade a court that copyright infringement did occur.)

But the Apache License 2.0 absolutely does require acknowledgment!

heavymark• 6 years ago

There message sounds like a clear apology, unless the poster is hoping to hear the actual words "I'm sorry". They screw uped and came clean, even though like in most cases takes trending on Hacker News to get that resolution.

crones• 6 years ago

I thought the message itself was okay and posted the article as it shows at least some action since the previous Hacker News discussion. I didn't want to edit the article's title though, beyond cutting the words "for Windows 10" to make it fit.

awinder• 6 years ago

You did the right thing, the source article just has a dreadful title.

KayL3• 6 years ago

I think the AppGet wanted his name on the repo.

lallysingh2• 6 years ago

'He went for an interview at Microsoft's Redmond headquarters in December, which apparently "went well", but Andrew didn't inform him he would not get the job at Microsoft until six months later – on the day before the WinGet preview would be unveiled at Build 2020. '

This is bullshit. Keep him quiet with the hope of a job (embrace) until they release their version (extend, extinguish). Changing CEOs doesn't change everyone who works there.

macspoofing• 6 years ago

That's not how "embrace, extend, extinguish" works. That practice is in the context of standards, and not products. Microsoft was perfectly in its right to build a package manager. They based it on an open-source version that allowed copying and forking. So no issue there either.

They did string the developer along, but I'm not sure it was anything nefarious. I think the people at MS who were looking to acquihire Keivan ran into roadblocks at MS from higher-ups for whatever reason and it just fell apart. It probably wasn't a nefarious strategy to string Keivan along in order to boost their WinGet announcement - but just general inconsideration and rudeness in not communicating.

sailingparrot2• 6 years ago

Can we please stop trying to slide in an EEE reference everytime something comes up about MS?

You have clearly embraced EEE, but now you are extending it way past what it actually means, and if people like you continue you will extinguish it because it will not mean anything anymore.

Please don't EEE EEE.

dustinmoris3• 6 years ago

Can we please stop trying to slide in an EEE reference everytime something comes up about MS?

Agreed and also this AppGet story wasn't EEE anyways. It was just a plain good old "Fuck you". There was no embrace or extend at any point :)

Lammy3• 6 years ago

We can stop talking about EEE when Microsoft stop practicing it. This time is just with regard to a community instead of a particular software product. WinGet is the “Extend” step where they overtake AppGet in usage and probably in package registrations until AppGet withers and eventually Extinguishes itself.

lallysingh2• 6 years ago

Do you have an official pedant's guide to EEE?

nojs• 6 years ago

Actual link to the statement: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/winget-install-le...

forgingahead2• 6 years ago

Cross-posted from another thread that is now buried:[0]

The "Andrew" in question who courted Keivan (AppGet's dev) is Andrew Clinick. He wrote a blog post in response to this a few days ago:

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/winget-install-le...

Still seems pretty tone-deaf to me - obviously MS seems to be in the legal clear, but the moral high ground and lots of dev goodwill has been lost.

It also damages the ability for devs to informally meet and chat with PMs at larger companies everywhere - adds a lot of mistrust to the eco-system.

This is not that MS came up with their own package manager. It's the entire song-and-dance routine that was conducted about potentially hiring Keivan, and then ghosting the engineer whose open-source product you were simultaneously cloning.

Of course, people will forget, but many will still remember. This is still a net-negative all-around when it didn't need to be.

Edit, this ZDNet article adds no new information and nothing has changed since the other articles have come out, but I guess it's good that more places are covering it to signal boost this properly.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23375624

franciscop3• 6 years ago

FWIW this has been discussed here (please HN do not spam it) where both Andrew and Keivan have started talking, and it seems then they took it to a private convo:

https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/issues/353

Disclaimer: I opened that issue

username3• 6 years ago

Keivan doesn’t want an apology. Keivan only wants credit.

GuiA• 6 years ago

Oh wow, what is even the point of this blog post? It boils down to:

- we released a thing

- yes we spent time courting the guy who made a version of the thing that ours looks suspiciously like, turns out he’s really good

- well yes our thing has a lot of features taken from the other thing!

- we’re excited for the future!! Maybe that guy can even help us out since he loves open source so much hahaha

Tone deaf at best, implied fuck you at worst.

Joeri• 6 years ago

I have a different reading of this. I think this is them doing the best they can within the limits set by microsoft's legal department. They cannot legally admit they looked at his code and copied the structure, because that opens them up to a copyright suit. In the blog post it seems they went as far as they could: admitting to being influenced by the ideas, without having actually copied any of the code.

If they really want to fix this, they need to pay AppGet's author some money, and get something in writing so they are legally protected from copyright suits. I assume they're negotiating this right now, and that once this deal is done there will be another blog post that is more genuine.

They really messed this up because it would have been cheap to get something in writing before releasing WinGet. Someone at microsoft legal dropped the ball.

xhkkffbf• 6 years ago

I'm mean I know it would be nice to toss him some money. And it sucks when companies ghost people. But really isn't the point of open source that everyone can do what they want with the code? And if you're not distributing the actual code, why do you owe them anything?

If I gave credit to everyone who influenced the code I write, the file would be huge. Does the world have enough disk drives to hold all the credit where credit is due?

scott_s6• 6 years ago

AppGet is open source, under the Apache 2.0 license: https://github.com/appget/appget. That means basing a new project off AppGet - including using its source code - is legally permissible.

edit: This is explicitly not a judgement of ethics.

PMan74• 6 years ago

They cannot legally admit they looked at his code and copied the structure, because that opens them up to a copyright suit.

AppGet is released under Apache License 2.0, Winget under MIT, I'm not sure how copyright would be an issue.

AppGet's author addresses that point here

https://keivan.io/the-day-appget-died/#edit-to-clarify-some-...

benatkin3• 6 years ago

Still seems pretty tone-deaf to me

It was well-received on GitHub. 15 thumbs up, 3 thumbs down. This is in a thread where people are showing a lot of support for @kayone.

https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/issues/353#issuecomm...

Side note: It's amusing that @aclinick doesn't have an avatar on GitHub, given these three facts: 1) @aclinick works for Microsoft 2) GitHub is a Microsoft property 3) LinkedIn is also a Microsoft property and has a very strict avatar policy

forgingahead2• 6 years ago

I want to clarify, my point was not to unleash a mob onto the MS PM, but rather to bring sunlight onto this issue and hopefully allow for a fix and prevention of this occurring again in the future. Health of the system and all that.

Nobody should get fired (Keivan himself said so in the Github issue), but now that there is some public attention on this, let the parties involved find an amicable way to resolve it their own satisfaction.

dotjosh• 6 years ago

It's unfortunate to hear all of this from Beige's perspective. But the optimist in me thinks this is probably just a big company focusing on a release and putting everything else on the back-burner. That doesn't make it right, but I want to think this isn't an example of how Microsoft wants to treat the community moving forward. I think AppGet, an officially supported package manager, should be a core feature. It needed to happen one way or another.

But the lack of UI to browse/search I think is too lacking so I put this up a few days ago: https://wingetit.com -- I imagine Microsoft is going to copy/replace this soon, but I won't mind.

ru552• 6 years ago

Taking the dude's work that he licensed them to take (via Apache 2.0) is one thing. Giving him false hope about a future job prospect is another.

stormdennis• 6 years ago

Yes that was really low scam artist type behaviour. Still, on the bright side, the more profitable MS are, the more money for Bill and Melinda's good causes

tarsinge• 6 years ago

Yeah if someone scam you $10 but give $0.001 to charity I guess it's a brighter side than if they kept everything.

rectang5• 6 years ago

But he didn't license them to take code without attribution. If they had forked the codebase, maintained the copyright notices and adhered to the conditions of the Apache License 2.0, that would have constituted "credit".

The Apache License 2.0 requires attribtion!

kolanos• 6 years ago

Anyone know why Microsoft implemented their package manager in C++ and not C#?

_lbaq• 6 years ago

I would guess fewer dependencies with a native image.

vips7L• 6 years ago

Probably because of startup time and size. Powershell faces these same problems.

Matthias247• 6 years ago

I would rather guess because "that was the team/persons favorite tool to do the job".

In most areas tool choices are less about objective benefits and more based on familiarity/popularity/etc.

snuxoll• 6 years ago

Microsoft is publishing this as part of a UWP package, writing it in C++ means it could publish the libraries as a framework package allowing other applications to consume it as WinRT components regardless of their implementation language (C++, Rust, C#, JS, etc).

Whether this is planned or not I don’t know, but as they are putting this in the App Installer package right now which also has a public API I would not be surprised.

atarian• 6 years ago

Based on what I read, I'm guessing Andrew initially thought Keivan was someone worth working with because of AppGet. But then something during the interview started rubbing Andrew the wrong way. Maybe it was the way Keivan talked or how he dressed. So he started ghosting Keivan and things got more awkward. Maybe this worked for Andrew in the office, but that's not how things work between a company and its community.

bluedino• 6 years ago

They could at least send him a new Surface Pro

saos2• 6 years ago

I thought they offered me Azure credit? Maybe he preferred that.

yesbabyyes• 6 years ago

They offered, but they didn't even come through on that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23333070

chooseaname• 6 years ago

Maybe I'm old school, but I think an apology should use the word apologize in it.

This is a "thank you", not an apology. But, at least it is better that what they did last week.

squarefoot• 6 years ago

Not sure if it applies here, but I've read before that is common practice for companies to never admit errors or apologizing because it could be used against them in court as if they were admitting some wrongdoing.

gowld3• 6 years ago

That's like saying people who steal for five it back because that's an admission of stealing. Of course it is. So what?

Not apologizing doesn't make them less wrong. It just means they are covering up whatever they did wrong.

bediger4000• 6 years ago

That may or may not be true, but why excuse a corporation for what would be insulting, pathologically rude behavior in an individual?

Wealthy entities (including even moderately rich humans) can't admit error for legal reasons. That seems like a recipe for continued abuses, frankly. I'd like to see that changed.

ken• 6 years ago

IANAL. I found an interesting article [1], "Legal Consequences of Apologizing", which says:

Usually, apologies are admissible into evidence. Admissability into evidence does not necessarily mean useful as evidence of guilt. Since an apology usually can be admitted into evidence, and because some plaintiffs choose to understand an apology as an admission of guilt, it seems safest not to apologize. Case law suggests, however, that courts do not see it this way. Judges and juries seem to like apologies and treat them favorably. Often, an apology does nothing to satisfy the plaintiff's burden of proof. In some proceedings, an apology can be a mitigating factor, and the lack of an apology can be an aggravating factor.

and concludes:

This article illustrates that judges and juries understand that expression of sympathy, regret, remorse and apology are not necessarily admissions of responsibility or liability. This serves the public interest because such expressions have the potential to reduce the number of lawsuits, rather than attract litigation. When someone goes to court armed only with an apology, they may find that it does nothing to satisfy the elements of the case they need to prove. Additional evidence is required, almost as if the apology did not exist.

Cool.

[1] https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...

Marsymars• 6 years ago

Depends on jurisdiction, some places have laws that explicitly make this not the case. e.g. https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/09a03

logicalmind• 6 years ago

"We will be open sourcing our service code into our our WinGet repository on GitHub so that we can work together with Keivan and others to enable a better WinGet repository listing service."

People who decide to "work together" should carefully read and understand the terms under which they're doing so:

https://opensource.microsoft.com/pdf/microsoft-contribution-...

hajile3• 6 years ago

Yes, "work together" means you work for free for Microsoft. Nothing more.

Because you sign your code over to them, they are free to CLOSE SOURCE future versions at ANY TIME.

Sure, you could attempt to fork, but the platform is proprietary and can lock you out (very likely in this case for "user security"). They are the biggest company in the world (by market cap) and those deep pockets mean they can outspend you until you go under or fall too far behind. It wouldn't be the first time.

gowld3• 6 years ago

This is nuts. Why not send the guy a $10-50K check (or to a nonprofit of his choosing) as a bounty/thank-you/we-love-open-spource-PR thing?

It would be one thing if there were trying to to hide it with closed source, but this was stupidly evil out in the open.

ocdtrekkie2• 6 years ago

My assumption is a program manager can relatively easily write a letter thanking someone for their insight and work, but that a significant amount of paperwork is entailed in sending someone a big check. It really depends what level this issue has made it up to for Microsoft. Did Satya hear about this? If the answer's no, money probably is hard to just disburse.

dustinmoris3• 6 years ago

For me the worst thing about this entire fiasco is really Microsoft's brazen unapologetic predator behaviour.

They've invited Keivan to their headquarters with a bait, giving him the wrong impression that they wanted to help him with the project when really they wanted to extract valuable information from his experience. He's been working on AppGet for a while, ran into issues, thought about problems which users are having, dealt with certain challenges and iterated until he got to a certain understanding/vision of his product. This is all very very valuable information not published anywhere in an open source thoughts database. It's just the experience and knowledge that only lives in Keivan's head and Microsoft knew that they had to bait him with some false promises and hopes in order to get access to that information which he might otherwise not have shared with a competitor. Also they didn't forget about Keivan. They knew what they were doing. At the beginning of the process someone put in their calendar to contact him the day before BUILD 2020 to send him this email, which is why he got the email the day before the announcement of WinGet. This was no coincidence.

That is fraud in my opinion. Who cares about his source code, they stole much more valuable stuff from him. Anyone who doesn't see that is ignorant or blind.

Keivan should take legal action.

hajile3• 6 years ago

I'd love to see what turned up in discovery as his lawyers sifted through MS records.

scott_s6• 6 years ago

What legal action, though? That is, what did Microsoft do that violates the law? I don't see anything. The code is open source, so I believe they're in the clear there. And I don't think they had a contract with Keivan, so I don't see any breach of contract disputes. To be clear, I think Microsoft acted unethically. But I don't see any obvious violation of the law.

Lammy3• 6 years ago

I don’t need a legal basis to be able to find Microsoft’s actions reprehensible here.

rishav_sharan• 6 years ago

That's not how OSS works. And Microsoft is under no legal obligation to hire someone just because they interviewed him.

It is a massive ball drop from MS, but there is nothing illegal about it.

z3t4• 6 years ago

Imagine working in an organisation with such a culture. People trying to screw each other over left and right.

hysan• 6 years ago

Original source was posted to HN a few days ago:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23367153

It likely got no views because the title is worded in such a way as to avoid the actual topic at hand. Given how it's written, my gut is that it was titled to avoid being picked up, so I'm glad a news source caught wind and is calling them out with an appropriate title.

jeffrallen• 6 years ago

Any apology would pretty much be "we're sorry we got caught".

jtdev• 6 years ago

Why anyone works with or supports Microsoft beyond corporate IT at this point is completely beyond me.

rdgthree2• 6 years ago

This seems more in the realm of poorly managed expectations and less intentional and malicious copying. After reading his original blog post[0] I felt like they were originally interested in acquiring his software, but decided to go in a different direction with it and just weren't transparent about that decision at the time. It's not like they had to talk to him, the code is literally open sourced.

There's definitely things to gain from talking to the author of the project, but seems a bit reaching to suggest they wouldn't have been able to do what they did without talking to him. And it seems like a particularly pessimistic read to assume they were just lying to him outright to pull from his experience. Very little to gain from being a shark in this scenario, tons to (potentially) gain from acquiring an existing package manager. Gotta follow the incentives.

It's also worth mentioning that he mentioned the name similarity in his post in this way:

When I showed it to my wife, the first thing she said was, “They Called it WinGet? are you serious!?” I didn’t even have to explain to her how the core mechanics, terminology, the manifest format and structure, even the package repository’s folder structure, are very inspired by AppGet.

He did not go on to mention that his own name was (nearly certainly) inspired by apt-get (stylized as AptGet on Ubuntu[1]). Implying he was the originator of the name [X]Get for a package manager seems aggressively dishonest, to the point that it throws his entire side of the argument into question for me.

I haven't looked thoroughly into the code, but this feels like someone who was expecting something to come out of his hard work and is (understandably) bummed it will now likely amount to nothing. I have trouble putting much blame on Microsoft for that.

[0]https://keivan.io/the-day-appget-died/

[1]https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AptGet

onemoresoop3• 6 years ago

It may also serve as a warning to other developers to beware the big MS’s practices

hardsoftnfloppy• 6 years ago

“We contribute to open source now, everything is fair game”

lstroud• 6 years ago

Embrace, extend, extinguish?

Microsoft now credits maker of AppGet but offers no apology

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