[HN Gopher] The Day AppGet Died (2020)
___________________________________________________________________
The Day AppGet Died (2020)
Author : q2loyp
Score : 217 points
Date : 2022-02-18 10:42 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (keivan.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (keivan.io)
| fnord77 wrote:
| was there some way to have prevented or mitigated this?
| [deleted]
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Don't know about the cloning of his product, but in terms of
| negotiation: Don't let yourself get strung along just because
| someone waves something you want in front of your face.
|
| 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.
| fartcannon wrote:
| This is why you use, at the very least, a version of the GPL. But
| he used Apache. So he basically did Microsofts job for them for
| free.
| protomyth wrote:
| They didn't use his code so license is irrelevant.
| Hakashiro wrote:
| Like someone else mentioned, this is not a source code issue. I
| think 90% of the people who got pissed back then thought
| Microsoft stole the code: get this, they didn't steal anything.
| One is C++ and the other is C# so it is literally impossible
| for a license to matter here. This would have been solved only
| with software patents. But I can very easily guess you're
| against software patents, aren't you? Or only when they're used
| by big evil corporations.
|
| 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.
| fartcannon wrote:
| kh_hk wrote:
| I say the following not knowing anything about appget internals.
|
| 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.
| svnpenn wrote:
| Exactly. Some "simple solution" might just be the end result of
| months or years of different iterations. Sometimes you can't
| know the best method until you've slowly and methodically tried
| all the worse ones.
| jka wrote:
| Note that Microsoft currently sponsors the author of AppGet on
| GitHub.
|
| (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...
| dustinmoris wrote:
| Prince Andrew has also just paid his victims _cough_ a person
| he has never met.
| jka wrote:
| There's a potential interpretation of Microsoft's sponsorship
| as "a financial gesture to minimize a problem", sure. Without
| knowing more about the story, though (and there's no
| requirement for the author or Microsoft to share more
| details), perhaps we won't really know.
| pwr-electronics wrote:
| > the outcome of the meeting as far as I understood it was, what
| can Microsoft do to help?
|
| Here's the problem. That's sales talk. If you're not buying,
| either give your sales pitch or quote them for consulting.
| david_allison wrote:
| (2020)
| q2loyp wrote:
| Corrected, thanks
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Here's an oldie, but goodie:
| http://www.theparticle.com/fun/fun.php?topic=microsoft&id=18...
| alias_neo wrote:
| I've read this several times before, and every time I do it hurts
| just as much.
|
| 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.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Kinda reminds me of the whole Flicktype debacle. Pretty much
| every company of a certain size has their fair share of bad
| management and traitorous corporate ladder-climbers. We, the
| users, are powerless to stop this.
| fartcannon wrote:
| What? You have all the power. You send an email and then stop
| buying their services.
|
| 'To whom it concerns, you guys are shitty so I'm cancelling
| services.'
| smoldesu wrote:
| Sure, just delete your iCloud account, Microsoft account,
| Amazon account, Netflix account and Google account. It's so
| easy that anyone could do it!
| fartcannon wrote:
| It really is that easy.
| [deleted]
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| iCloud - you don't really need an alternative.
|
| 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.
| luciusdomitius wrote:
| Out of those I only have Google, even though I use it
| only for spam e-mails these days, having opted for
| Protonmail for the real stuff. The only reason I still
| have a Google Account is that my Pinephone Pro hasn't
| arrived yet. Once I get it and figure out it fills my
| most critical needs, the Google account gets shredded
| too.
|
| Giving up on Netflix and Spotify was much less difficult
| than expected.
| luciusdomitius wrote:
| Well. Cold reality is that even 5-year old kids know what sort
| of company MSFT is and what sort of people work for them. He
| acted like an useful fool, got treated like one. I even smirked
| a bit at his misery, even though I am normally not that kind of
| person.
|
| 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.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Yes, that's an important takeaway, but
|
| > I even smirked a bit at his misery
|
| smirking at someone for getting rolled is low.
| bacchusracine wrote:
| >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.
| Shared404 wrote:
| > Cold reality is that even 5-year old kids know what sort of
| company MSFT is and what sort of people work for them.
|
| Mate, 80% of college students don't know that.
|
| Source: Work at a computer repair shop and see shocked faces.
| CRConrad wrote:
| Then again most five-year-olds seem smarter than most
| college students.
| Shared404 wrote:
| I dunno.
|
| 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 .
| CRConrad wrote:
| College students have spent much longer being
| indoctrinated that corporations are good, and the bigger
| the better, than have five-year-olds. In that sense the
| joke actually was -- at least to some small part --
| serious.
| jmcgough wrote:
| How is he going to take out a patent for or aggressively
| license OSS? The code is already out for anyone to use at
| that point.
| fraktl wrote:
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| electroly wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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."
| CRConrad wrote:
| > it's fairly clear to me that the author failed the
| interview.
|
| 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.
| intern4tional wrote:
| Microsoft employs many people that are open-source
| advocates. Someone's perspective on that would not impact
| their status in an interview.
|
| 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.
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| easton wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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...
|
| https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/pull/1765
| CRConrad wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Well, TBF, that's exactly what "winget upgrade _--all "_
| sounds like it _should_ do.
| arepublicadoceu wrote:
| Every Linux package manager that I use have an option to
| hold one or more packages from upgrading. It's common
| sense that one or more piece of software might break on
| update and the user should be able to hold it until a fix
| arrive. Even arch where it's heavily discouraged to do
| partial upgrades have an option to pin packages.
|
| 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.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| They also don't really promote it as far as I can tell. I
| didn't find out about it until I was looking up some stuff
| about choco. It's terrible what they did to this guy. I know
| he shared his stuff as open source but still to string him
| along for over a year whilst also having a team working on
| what he had built and barely acknowledging it or helping him
| out in some way.
| aranchelk wrote:
| > it's fairly clear to me that the author failed the
| interview
|
| 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.
| easton wrote:
| winget is protected as it's providing the API for the
| Microsoft Store to manage Win32 apps. I think there's been a
| decent amount of adoption, there's lots of install pages (Git
| is one I noticed recently) that have winget install right
| next to brew install.
| electroly wrote:
| That's an interesting bit about the Microsoft Store; I
| didn't know that. Thanks!
| alias_neo wrote:
| Admittedly I don't have any experience with this sort of
| thing, but I have always read it as; Microsoft want his work,
| they should have just paid him X million for it, or paid him
| to keep working on it.
|
| 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.
| derkoe wrote:
| Please don't use any of these. Use scoop - it just works
| https://github.com/ScoopInstaller/scoop No admin needed for
| almost all packages, "scoop update *" to update your system,
| authoring packages is very easy.
| chem83 wrote:
| I like an I use scoop alongside winget after many years of
| Chocolatey, but there are many packages not available through
| scoop, mostly because there isn't a viable portable way to
| install them. Also, scoop does nothing to take advantage of the
| MSIX Containers that sandbox apps, so that they can be cleanly
| update and later removed.
|
| 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.
| Jenk wrote:
| All scoop does is extract installers/archives from the
| applications own portable distributions, and then create
| shims for them. Scoop packages aren't actually packages. They
| are just manifests that point to a URL to the apps download,
| and a list of executables to make shims/shortcuts for and
| that is it.
|
| There's the nonportable bucket for apps that have er..
| nonportable versions.
| morelish wrote:
| Good read. I've used chocolatey a lot plus a lot of other
| Microsoft installation tools. Windows has been crying out for a
| decent package manager for years. It's amazing how little of a
| sh*t Microsoft seemed to give about stuff that open-source
| systems provide as a first class citizen.
|
| 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.
| chem83 wrote:
| There's very little incentive to adopt Linux as a kernel given
| how popular Microsoft is with consumer grade OEMs developing
| for the WHQL driver program. That's one point of competitive
| advantage Microsoft would be nuts to let go off.
|
| 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.
| transfire wrote:
| What open source license did AppGet use?
|
| 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.
| notriddle wrote:
| It didn't matter what license he used, because Microsoft
| reimplemented it from scratch anyway.
| magpi3 wrote:
| Apache. And winget-cli is licensed under the MIT license. So
| although the licenses are incompatible, the end result would
| have been the same even if Microsoft had simply forked winget
| with the Apache license, although in that case they would have
| had to credit the original author, and the lack of credit is
| the original author's main issue with how this was handled.
| pedro2 wrote:
| AFAIK they copied no code. Just everything else.
| scim-knox-twox wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=keivan.io
| piceas wrote:
| The Day AppGet Died (keivan.io) 1930 points by lostmsu on May
| 27, 2020 | past | 535 comments
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23331287
| [deleted]
| pengwing wrote:
| As founder and main developer of a product, I feel that both the
| first suggestion of an aqui-hire and the second suggestion of
| getting a regular job at MSFT are completely ludicrous. Far too
| weak.
|
| 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.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Yeah unless you are a Kernighan or Torvalds or Vanrossum aqui-
| hire doesn't seem like a real thing because middle management
| can never stand to have someone who isn't 100% under their
| power.
| joshu wrote:
| I had a similar story with Yahoo but rejected the job offer. A
| few years later they had to buy the company anyway.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Yeah this is a learning lesson no doubt. Management of a
| company can never put up with a person who isn't 100% under
| their control. Only the top 0.001% of developers will get away
| with that. Better to realize they want what you have and you
| have to figure out some way to get a handle on that or realize
| like this poor guy in a year some internal team has copied what
| you did and they have 100x the resources that you have.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Now I understand what Tuco meant when he said "Sometimes you
| gotta rob to keep your riches."
| ijidak wrote:
| I'd recommend retaining a lawyer as soon as a large company like
| Microsoft reaches out to you. (Even if it's just for your private
| education of risks, rights and strategy.)
|
| 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.
| LeonB wrote:
| This caused a big splash at the time.
|
| 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...)
| gdcbe wrote:
| I find it a bit shallow that they throw around these words so
| easily. The apologies would have a bit more worth IMHO if they
| actually would compensate him financially for the foundational
| work. Sure it's not a legal requirement but I do believe it is
| the right thing to do and it's not like they would feel it...
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| There wasn't anything foundational.
|
| The author himself said he wanted to replicate the package
| managers available on Linux.
| a2tech wrote:
| Don't ever forget that at its core Microsoft is still the same
| company we grew up with. Just because they're singing sweet songs
| now doesn't mean they're fundamentally different.
|
| 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.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Just a nit: I fully agree with you that deep inside, Microsoft
| is still as evil as in the past (competition forced them to
| hide it a bit better is all). But I'm still all in on the `new'
| Microsoft. I don't think these two necessarily exclude each
| other.
|
| I mean the alternatives are Linux, which I haven't the patience
| for, or Apple which is also evil but just in different ways.
| fartcannon wrote:
| You deserve what you get then.
| causi wrote:
| _Just because they're singing sweet songs now doesn't mean
| they're fundamentally different._
|
| 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.
| rob74 wrote:
| Well in my book the order is still something like Google < M$
| < Facebook < Amazon when it comes to "evilness". Not sure
| where I would rank Apple on that scale (and I also don't use
| Apple products a lot), so I left them out.
|
| 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...
| fartcannon wrote:
| Apple and Microsoft are equals.
| Shared404 wrote:
| > Well in my book the order is still something like Google
| < M$ < Facebook < Amazon when it comes to "evilness".
|
| 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.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > requiring you to have a Microsoft account for future
| versions of Windows 11.
|
| 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.
| causi wrote:
| But that forced approach only worked on the people who had
| auto-update enabled. For people like me who had WU disabled
| it didn't affect me at all.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > For people like me who had WU disabled
|
| ...
|
| 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.
| causi wrote:
| I would've been one of those people, if I'd ever had a
| security breach. At this point I've been saved so much
| time and hassle not putting up with Microsoft's nonsense
| I could spend a month dealing with a stolen identity and
| I'd still come out on top. Of course I'm not one of the
| numpties that runs untrusted JS in my browser or installs
| rando programs.
| vetinari wrote:
| There's a reason WHY people disabled WU. Microsoft might
| consider that, before going with heavy-handed approach.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Also the fact that WU breaks things. Might be worth
| considering that.
| teh64 wrote:
| > mandatory iTunes activation
|
| 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.
| simion314 wrote:
| And they are the company that bought Skype, forced me to
| create Microsoft accounts and then mess things up, now they
| boutght Minecraft and I just receive an ultimatum to switch
| my Mojang account to a Microsoft account. F U MS, can't you
| let me login with existing shit,.
|
| 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.
| moron4hire wrote:
| What are you talking about? Microsoft's Text-To-Speech APIs
| are the best on the market. Google's are definitely a
| distant second: not as many languages, not as many voices,
| and the output is nowhere near as good. After those two,
| there isn't really anything left worth mentioning.
| causi wrote:
| _Microsoft 's Text-To-Speech APIs are the best on the
| market._
|
| 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?
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| They have basically been licensing L&H then Nuance until
| they bought it outright.
| zidad wrote:
| You can just try it out here from the browser if you
| like:
|
| https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-
| service...
| causi wrote:
| That's a good demo, but it isn't much use for making
| audio content from ebooks.
| hobo_mark wrote:
| Transcribing an entire ebook this way is going to be
| _expensive_.
| simion314 wrote:
| I am talking about they have one documentation but if you
| look deeper there are 2 products, thay say here are 2
| options long and short API , but look closer and see one
| uses names like "Name", "Voice" the other "name", "voice"
| , the list of voices of this 2 options are not the same ,
| and you randomly get weird errors with shit message that
| will solve themselves in the next few days. If my memory
| is correct you authenticate in2 different ways.
|
| 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
| moron4hire wrote:
| I mean, there's the old Windows-only SAPI from the
| Windows XP days that they haven't been developing for
| several years now, and the current Azure Cognitive
| Services, which is just a REST API with a pretty standard
| auth scheme. There's an official .NET package for
| wrapping that REST API, but it's certainly not necessary
| to use it if you know how to handle REST APIs. Is that
| what you're talking about?
| simion314 wrote:
| Yes, the Azure API, there are 2 different things under
| the hood, the short and login APIs, that are different
| names, different auth headers, different voices
| supported, voices with same name that have different
| styles supported. Bad errors messages that popup and get
| fixed in a few days but only on one of the APIs. The
| issue is that I am trying to combine the short and long
| APIs in one product and I am hitting this big
| inconsistencies, I see lcearly there are 2 teams and do
| things different , if you use only one section you have a
| completly different experience.
|
| 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.
| stickfigure wrote:
| I don't understand this complaint. You _want_ separate
| logins for every service? You can 't even argue that there
| are privacy issues - these are now all part of the same
| company.
|
| 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.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Yeah, people like to block off parts of their life. It's
| not really that hard to manage accounts with password
| managers and saved sessions. Microsoft doesn't need to
| have everything at their greedy little fingertips to data
| mine.
| simion314 wrote:
| This is a lame excuse, say what after the forced account
| migration is my pourchase invalid? Will Microsoft just
| drop the db table with my purchase and logins? Will they
| refuse to migrate people after?
|
| 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?
| causi wrote:
| _They fucked up my skype account move_
|
| 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.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > You want separate logins for every service?
|
| 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.
| tomrod wrote:
| > You want separate logins for every service?
|
| 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.
| stickfigure wrote:
| You can create as many Microsoft logins as you like. If
| you want to separate Minecraft and Azure, go ahead. But
| there's no reason this requires separate authentication
| technology or infrastructure.
| causi wrote:
| I'm talking about using your PC, not logging into
| Microsoft's online services. Using the same account for
| Microsoft's possessions like Xbox and Minecraft and Skype
| makes sense. That's fine. But you know something?
| _Microsoft doesn 't own my god damned computer._
| CRConrad wrote:
| There are still a few of us who remember; I've tried posting
| responses here when the Nadella Kool-Aid gets too thick. But on
| the whole, kids nowadays -- even on here -- are far too easily
| impressed by superficial "Internet and Open Source-friendly"
| bling-bling BS.
|
| (Geroffmylawn, punks.)
| [deleted]
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| This story gets reposted on HN quite often, and makes it to the
| front page. Several things don't add up in it.
|
| 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...
| jmcgough wrote:
| He never claims that his code was copied - just that they used
| the same approach and a lot of similar patterns.
|
| 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.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| I dunno, getting inspired and copying all the ideas, deciding
| that they can do a good enough job internally instead of hiring
| Keivan doesn't sound like a bad thing in and of itself.
|
| 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.
| [deleted]
| indymike wrote:
| >I dunno, getting inspired and copying all the ideas, deciding
| that they can do a good enough job internally instead of hiring
| Keivan doesn't sound like a bad thing in and of itself.
|
| 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?
| john_moscow wrote:
| >I dunno, getting inspired and copying all the ideas, deciding
| that they can do a good enough job internally instead of hiring
| Keivan doesn't sound like a bad thing in and of itself.
|
| 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.
| piyh wrote:
| You could release your code with a less permissive license
| (say excluding companies with a 1 trillion dollar market cap)
| so they at least have to play ball with you.
| chasil wrote:
| The GPLv3 might be enough to do that, for some. It was
| sufficient concern for Apple, who dumped Samba, bash, and
| gcc.
|
| 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#...
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| LLVM is also more modular. The front-end and back-ends
| are well decoupled and it's possible to work on them
| separately. Useful for a company that has to target two
| CPU architectures.
| [deleted]
| andix wrote:
| I don't get why he was so upset about it. Microsoft didn't want
| to accept his offer. But still WinGet is not as good as AppGet.
| So if he just had kept going his way with AppGet, maybe WinGet
| would have never gotten any traction. Like a lot of projects,
| Microsoft more or less abandoned WinGet right away. You still
| can't do ,,winget update" and update all your installed packages.
| For me one of the main features of a package manager.
| [deleted]
| chem83 wrote:
| Won't 'winget upgrade --all' do the trick for you?
| allisdust wrote:
| Wow that's quite a disgusting thing to do. It's surprising how
| measured his take was.
|
| 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.
| axiomdata316 wrote:
| It's kind of sad but it looks like Kevin hasn't posted anything
| since this. I hope this experience didn't break him.
| jmcgough wrote:
| from https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/2/21277863/microsoft-
| winget-...:
|
| "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.
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