
The Day AppGet Died - lostmsu
https://keivan.io/the-day-appget-died/
======
kayone
Author here, Because it's sure to come up here is a comment I wrote on Reddit
that clarifies somethings, I haven't updated the original article since I'm
not sure what the etiquette for updating a highly shared article is.

\------

Code being copied isn't an issue. I knew full well what it meant to release
something opensource and I don't regret it one bit. What was copied with no
credit is the foundation of the project. How it actually works. If I were the
patenting type, this would be the thing you would patent. ps. I don't regret
not patenting anything. And I don't mean the general concept of package/app
managers, they have been done a hundred times. If you look at similar projects
across OSes, Homebrew, Chocolaty, Scoop, ninite etc; you'll see they all do it
in their own way. However, WinGet works pretty much identical to the way
AppGet works. Do you want to know how Microsoft WinGet works? go read the
article ([https://keivan.io/appget-what-chocolatey-
wasnt/](https://keivan.io/appget-what-chocolatey-wasnt/)) I wrote 2 years ago
about how AppGet works.

I'm not even upset they copied me. To me, that's a validation of how sound my
idea was. What upsets me is how no credit was given.

~~~
dmix
Calling it "WinGet" was the real punch in the gut.

Does Microsoft select for assholes or something? There's a thousand other
package manager names [1] in the wild and they chose that one.

So much for "developers, developers, developers"...

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_package_manag...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_software_package_management_systems)

~~~
TAForObvReasons
In all fairness:

\- "NuGet" is super-popular in .NET circles (included in Visual Studio by
default)

\- "apt-get" is the classic tool for Windows Subsystem for Linux

So "WinGet" certainly "makes sense" as a name without being a direct ripoff of
AppGet

~~~
banger180
> "apt-get" is the classic tool for Windows Subsystem for Linux

APT is the classic tool for debian-like Linux distributions. FTFY

~~~
teekert
Get used to it, this is going to be the bulk of the "Linux" users from now on.

Edit: Imo not a bad thing, it's just how it is. A lot of people will learn
(of) Linux through WSL. Linux as a runtime.

~~~
knolax
Considering the fact that there are five times as many Android devices as
Windows devices, and the greater ease of use of Termux compared to WSL. I find
that highly unlikely. Anecdotally every newbie programmer I've seen try to use
WSL has just ended up installing Linux in frustration.

~~~
teekert
Termux is a terminal emulator, WSL is a subsystem. Did you try [0]? And WSL2?

It's pretty compelling, I predict they will pull in a lot of Apple (who use it
for the terminal) devs and make a lot of Windows first devs very happy. And
there are a lot.

Btw, am I downvoted because my original comment in not constructive or do
people not agree with me?

[0] [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-
terminal/9n0dx20hk...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/windows-
terminal/9n0dx20hk701?activetab=pivot:overviewtab)

~~~
VibrantClarity
I doubt it pulls in anybody in the unfinished state its in. WSL does not
integrate very well and is miserably slow. My 13yo thinkpad runs circles
around WSL running on my workstation. WSL2 is still beta, and given how buggy
1909 still is, I am not installing 2004 on anything I care about. And I
recently tried Windows Terminal, but it couldn't even give me an admin prompt
without giving every single session elevated privileges, so I gave up after 5
minutes.

------
ijidak
Keivan obviously got screwed.

Having worked at Microsoft, and seeing the nature of the bureaucracy, the only
advice I would give for next time is...

Just realize you can't set terms with a large company like MSFT unless you get
lawyers involved early.

Stealing from you outright is simply too tempting, given their resources.

I noticed there were some conditions Keivan tried to set regarding the future
evolution of the technology before joining MSFT.

In a large company like MSFT, there were bound to be large internal email
threads relaying a play-by-play of negotiations with Keivan to: inside legal
counsel, developers who already gave t-shirt sizes for building the tech in-
house, product managers, and dozens of others.

No matter what they tell you, they're internally weighing

\- Should we just rip him off? \- Should we hire him? Would that be better or
worse for liability? \- How IP protected is this? How much can we "borrow"? \-
Is it worth the hassle of dealing with an aqui-hire we can't control? Would
that expose us to even more IP risk, or less?

Once companies reach this size, they simply can't be trusted to handle a
negotiation transparently and in good faith, unless you have well paid lawyers
fighting for you, or well established IP protection.

I guess what I'm saying is...

When dealing with any large tech company with near infinite resources -- like
MSFT, GOOG, etc --, find a legally defensible upper hand, and assume they are
weighing the cost-benefit of screwing you.

(Sadly, this is exactly why lawyers make so much money.)

~~~
ximeng
Hopefully they also weigh in the fact that screwing developers over is
terrible publicity. Assume 100k developers see this and are slightly less
inclined to trust MS in future, this bad publicity could easily cost them 1mn
USD plus. A good will gesture of 100k USD at the start for consulting could
have saved everyone a lot of trouble.

See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23332123](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23332123)
elsewhere in this thread for an example of the consequences.

The cost of GitHub to MS was around 250 usd per user. If 4000 users leave
that’s already a million USD.

~~~
tarsinge
I find MS seems quite immune to terrible publicity in the recent years. "But
it's not the same company as before! They are doing open-source now!" yada
yada

~~~
pgt
They are not immune. As someone who has been supportive of Microsoft getting
their act together, and who recently spoke at a Microsoft-sponsored
conference, this stuff makes me hesitant to give any Microsoft-owned
properties money and discourages me from trying new Microsoft products.

~~~
aerique
There will be newer people after you flocking to the new Microsoft. Given how
scummy and bad they have been in the past and how many people have been
cheerleading them here, do you really think it works that way?

When people were warning against Microsoft on this forum they were just set
aside as cynical, grumpy Unix-beards. If that happens even here, what do you
think will happen elsewhere?

~~~
pgt
I think it's changing. I was one of the young people who did not believe the
neckbeards (who are evangelists in their own right) since I wasn't around when
the EEE strategy happened. I was happy with Windows because for me it was a
better user experience, but today I run Linux and OSX. The world is more
connected now than it was. These sentiments can spread faster now.

------
allenu
This was definitely not a great experience, but my hunch is what happened is
some higher ups decided no, they don't need to hire you, the original team
tells recruiting to notify you, recruiting drops the ball somehow, team goes
on with their lives believing that you were told they were no longer
interested, and everyone (except you, since you never got notified) believed
the whole thing was resolved.

The original people (not recruiters) who reached out to you should've
connected after the decision was made. They probably figured the recruiters
would do their dirty work, so no need to engage.

Full disclosure: I worked at Microsoft for over a decade, so I know how slow
and lumbering it can be. I bet some emails were missed and people didn't
follow up because "they had a lot of other things they were tracking".

~~~
scotty79
> some higher ups decided no, they don't need to hire you

Total misjudgment on their part. Thanks to this one HN post they already lost
in terms of developer good will way more than his potential salary would be.

Every time anyone who uses WinGet, who read this, will think 'oh, yeah, that's
the tool that Microsoft build their version of behind original author's back,
while stringing him and ghosting for few months".

~~~
mikekchar
Realistically, though, a year from now nobody will care. I mean, I started in
this industry in the "MS is outright evil" era. How many people did they screw
over? If I remember correctly, there was even a guy who was owed a pile of
stock/stock options and when he got cancer they suddenly went missing (no need
to pay the dead guy!). Day by day, year by year, these misdeeds are seen as
irrelevant. MS is a different company these days (almost literally). Should we
hold them accountable for their past sins forever? (I have a friend who still
refuses to buy products from Nestle given their ancient "poison in baby
formula is OK as long as it saves us money" stance. That's older than I am!)

In reality, these kinds of antics just don't hurt companies significantly --
even ridiculously horrible things that are arguably crimes against humanity
(have I invoked Godwin's law?) In comparison to some of the incredibly awful
things companies do (and get away with), this is minor to the point of not
even being a footnote in the annals of evil (note to self: don't google that
term to check the spelling...).

However, there will be a few of us who will be reminded of why we don't do
business with MS (and hence will have no need of WinGet). It won't make any
difference, but it will be there.

~~~
quietbritishjim
About Nestlé's poison baby formula: I though their baby formula was safe, but
the problem is that they gave it away (maybe still do?) for free to new
mothers in developing countries and when the mothers stopped lactating
(because their own milk wasn't being drunk) they made the price hopelessly
unaffordable so now the babies couldn't drink from either source, or at least
needed to over-dilute the formula.

Totally reasonable to still boycott them, makes more sense than getting
annoyed at Microsoft in a situation like this (which is also deserved but more
minor in the grand scheme of things).

~~~
mikekchar
That's more recent. A long time ago (and I'm working from memory, so best to
fact check anything I say, because my memory is terrible) it was common to use
a particular rat poison in dry milk (and I forget exactly what it was). There
were certain standards as to how much rat poison you were allowed to have. It
was well known that this would kill a small percentage of babies, but it was
thought to be a reasonable tradeoff at the time. To be fair, it wasn't just
Nestle. In Japan, the dairy giant Morinaga had the exact same problem. I
believe there were law suits that dragged on for literal generations and
eventually things changed.

~~~
grenoire
What's the point of even adding rat poison in baby formula? What does that
accomplish?

~~~
mikekchar
My understanding was that it's while it is in bulk storage in warehouses. It
keeps the rat population down. I've been trying to find evidence that I'm
correct about this and like another commenter has posted, it may be that I'm
confusing the Morinaga problems with Nestle. However, I was sure I heard about
Nestle before I heard about Morinaga, but... My memory isn't the greatest :-(

------
tannerbrockwell
Microsoft pretends to want to acquire a product or software and then release
their own implementation.

The developer was obviously brain-picked for any implementation ideas, as
stated at scale. They should have been paying a retainer, or had an offer
inside of two weeks.

Let this be a warning for other developers.

~~~
908B64B197
The code basically takes a .yaml manifest, reads where to find the package and
get the installation instructions from an enum. I don't think there was much
brain-picking here.

~~~
boublepop
You point is that this is simple, yet Microsoft with Thousands of engineers
working over the span of decades never internally developed this idea or
framework except after picking the brain of this particular person and doing a
copy of that particular competing project.

Paintings are just paint on a canvas, and all code is just clicks on a
keyboard. That doesn’t make it any less immoral to blatantly copy without
recognition.

It’s perfectly fine to carry out a fork, the irony here is that Microsoft
likely tried you play this angle of “we’re just competing, not copying you”
because they thought carrying out a fork with attribution would blow up in
their face, which this now has.

~~~
908B64B197
> yet Microsoft with Thousands of engineers working over the span of decades
> never internally developed this idea

Ever heard of NuGet[0]? Been around since 2010.

WinGet isn't a fork of AppGet, the codebases share nothing.

[0] [https://www.nuget.org/](https://www.nuget.org/)

------
pixelmonkey
I've been learning a little bit about "the new Microsoft" and its new
relationship with open source, and I think I get it now.

MSFT is treating open source communities and free F/OSS code contributions the
way they might have treated blogging and IT forums in a prior era.

It's "developer community" and "power user" engagement. It's a hybrid product
management and marketing function.

In this particular scenario, the winget product manager views the appget
author as a "Windows enthusiast" of sorts, not a competitor, a peer, or a
colleague. Just a "power user persona" of the Microsoft userbase.

So, when you understand this, reading the PM's email to him ahead of winget's
launch makes more sense.

> We give appget a call out in our blog post too since we believe there will
> be space for different package managers on windows. You will see our package
> manager is based on GitHub too but obviously with our own implementation
> etc. our package manager will be open source too so obviously we would
> welcome any contribution from you.

Specifically: it's like getting called out explicitly by a forum mod, or being
a frequent blog commenter who is mentioned by name in a blogger's main post.

It's "an honor" to have appget explicitly mentioned in an "official" Microsoft
announcement. And to have your community work "inspire" so much of winget's
design! So when the PM wrote the email, he probably wasn't even thinking it
would feel like trolling. He was probably thinking, "isn't it cool we are
doing this 'F/OSS collaboration thing' together? How 'New Microsoft' of us!"

And I can't say I blame him. Microsoft is just less smooth about their
appropriation of F/OSS for marketing purposes. Other companies manage to do it
without the developers noticing.

~~~
logicalmind
If you want to see what Microsoft thinks of open source and contributors, then
all you have to do is read the license they want you to agree to before doing
so:

[https://opensource.microsoft.com/pdf/microsoft-
contribution-...](https://opensource.microsoft.com/pdf/microsoft-contribution-
license-agreement.pdf)

------
pavlov
The story reminds me of Andy Hertzfeld’s Switcher:

[https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...](https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Switcher.txt)

The difference is that, in 1984, Bill Gates immediately offered $40k and Steve
Jobs offered $100k for plugging a hole in their operating system.

In 2020, Microsoft just strings you along on vague promises while they
simultaneously rip you off.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
I love how those stories of the early years are so different from what I think
of looking at companies today -

> Jeff picked me up at the airport, and we drove to Microsoft's main building
> where we were joined by Neil Konzen, a talented 23 year old who was
> Microsoft's main systems programmer on the Macintosh. I knew Neil from his
> days as an early Apple II hobbyist, when we collaborated on adding features
> to an assembly language development system when he was only 16.

Just... "Microsoft's main systems programmer on the Macintosh" is such a
_weird_ sentence to read today. On the other hand, Microsoft also shipped
Xenix, a full-on licensed Unix™ OS _before_ they shipped DOS.

~~~
zitterbewegung
You do realize that Microsoft Word has been on the Mac since 1985 suite and
even the first Microsoft Flight Simulator was on the Apple II?

Also Applesoft basic was derived from Microsoft basic?

Yes, they did copy the operating system but that doesn't mean that the Mac
Platform is unimportant to them.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
I'm perfectly familiar with Microsoft being an _application_ vendor for
Apple's platforms, long before that was Macintosh:) What threw me off with the
notion of them employing a _systems_ programmer for a non-MS OS.

~~~
pvg
It makes more sense when you consider that 'systems programmer' doesn't mean
'writes operating systems' (especially back then) and the line between
application and systems programming was quite blurry (double especially back
then).

------
helsinkiandrew
If Microsoft is serious about supporting open source then this is the kind of
story that it needs to stop happening.

It may be perfectly legal to come out with their own version of AppGet, to
base it on AppGet, and give it a name that is very close to AppGet, and if the
developer wasn't a fit for Microsoft then they don't have to hire him.

But behaving in this way is like biting the hand that feeds you in terms of
open source they come out sounding like a __*oles.

When it was clear they didn't want to do an acqui-hire one solution would be
to indicate that it was possibly they were going to create their own version
of the product and perhaps 'purchase' the AppGet design/concept, or pay a
consultancy fee for the time the developer was being interviewed - even for a
token sum.

~~~
doublerabbit
> If Microsoft is serious about supporting open source

Microsoft isn’t serious about supporting open source at all. It’s just a
gimmicky ploy to get users back from Linux to Windows.

~~~
LockAndLol
And it's working. Linux users are even excited about WSL, cross-platform C#,
Microsoft in a VM being called Linux native, github being bought, etc.

Linux users aren't more principled or anything than windows users. I'd go as
far and say that people just want free stuff and some are willing to put more
effort into it. We have no higher standards or morals and are no better than
the windows or mac crowd.

~~~
MaulingMonkey
It's working both ways, fortunately.

Yes, I get to use Linux tools from Windows, helping keep me on Windows.

But it also means I'm more likely to build/test/fix my junk on Linux, helping
me reduce my absolute and pre-existing _dependency_ on Windows.

------
fraggle222
Not sure how MSFT usually handles it, but when I was acqui-hired (by a
different large tech company, not quite on MSFT scale, but no trifle) I dealt
almost exclusively with a person from Business Development. Maybe it is a bad
sign that they had you discussing with people in their engineering group
directly. Sounds like they were gathering data from you with no real plan to
acquire. Then again every company may do it differently.

For me, there were some questions about my technology, but not a lot. Mostly
we agreed on terms, and then they came up with a 40 page contract :) (the bus-
dev guy said they don't really treat a small acquisition like mine that much
differently than a larger acquisition in terms of contract verbiage). I had my
lawyers (no I did not have any before this offer), review it.

But overall I felt that someone, who later I'm pretty sure turned out to be
the CEO, had told their Business Development guy, just acquire this thing (and
bring him along if you can), so they just went about doing that and it came
out ok.

~~~
lostmsu
Out of curiosity, how long the process took until the deal was signed?

~~~
fraggle222
I had to go back and look it was a while back, it took longer than I
remembered it. The initial reach out was in May 2011. I had some initial
conversation with them in May and June, sent them some overview of the
company, etc. Then didn't hear back for a while. In December 2011
conversations started back up. By then the company had actually launched a
product where they could see my business being useful. I sent them some small
amount of data as a sample. I had actually proposed a simpler lower cost
proposal of them just purchasing the data they wanted and not the business or
acquiring me to work there. Anyway sometime at beginning of Feb 2012, things
started to move faster and then it was done by beginning of March 2012. So in
my mind/memory it was really January 2012 to beginning of March but really
started in May 2011.

~~~
haltingproblem
Thanks for sharing the timeline. These things take far longer than anyone
realizes.

~~~
eitally
Lots of times the process starts through some mid-level manager expressing
interest in a possible m&a, and initiating what I'd call "casual" due
diligence, along the lines of what the PP described. The issue here, from the
target's pov, is that the person/team sponsoring the research/engagement isn't
empowered to execute an acquisition -- ultimately, they're just performing
research to build a business case that validates the viability of the
purchase, and helps provides insights sufficient to guide the acquiring
company's deal team on desirable base contract terms & structures. All this
_feels_ like it's an acquisition moving quickly to small companies that
haven't been through it before, but it really isn't. Only after the corporate
development analysts & attorneys get involved will it move quickly, but that's
primarily for two reasons: 1) the due diligence is already largely completed,
and 2) they hold the purse strings.

Note that it's pretty common for years to pass between the first and second
stages of this process, and there are any number of reasons why acquisition
negotiations can either suddenly accelerate (it becomes competitive,
partnering isn't going to work as a fallback, the target is going out of
business, the acquiring company needs to unload cash fast, ...) or slow down
(partnering becomes more desirable than acquisition, 1st party development
becomes competitive, various legal reasons intervene, business strategy shifts
away from whatever made the acquisition interesting in the first place, org
changes shift the focus away from the acquisition, ...).

~~~
haltingproblem
It would be very useful to know the percentage of completed deals. Is it 1% or
10% or higher? I think the number tends towards 1% rather than 10%. We
(mostly) hear about successful deals and not unsuccessful ones which why this
article is very valuable.

------
alpb
There are parts of Microsoft that understand open source. Most parts of the
Windows team ain’t that (exceptions apply). Reading this saddens me a lot as
he clearly got screwed. But this is why any project with momentum should
consider growing its community and maybe forming a foundation.

For example, Homebrew and its community/infrastructure is better than and
bigger than anything Apple could ever do (and we know how they run Mac App
Store to begin with).

When the author said “Microsoft would hire me, AppGet would come with me, and
they would decide if they wanted to rename it something else” , I can
immediately tell that’s not how you do OSS. That would be betraying to your
users and maintainers.

Did Microsoft ask Nat Friedman and Miguel de Icaza to bring Mono with them to
kill/rename it? No, that’s not what happened. And thats how significant open
source projects/communities should work; not controlled by a single person.

~~~
dustinmoris
Nobody at Microsoft understands open source. The people who pretend to
understand are just glorified sales people pretending to be developers
promoting every new Microsoft product regardless how shit it is or how much
better other competing products are (you know who these sales people are).

Microsoft loves OSS as much as they are able to control it. They are like an
abusive partner who "love you" for as long as they control every step of your
life but as soon as you step aside they'll grab a hammer and smash you in the
face.

~~~
7leafer
Micorsoft loves OSS as much as they are able to profit off it. Did they spend
$7.5B buying github for the love of ideals?

And sure enough they understand OSS for what it is better than anyone else.
Thank you, creative person, here is your exposure.

------
apetresc
I have a sneaking suspicion that part of the reason for the sudden radio-
silence after his on-campus interview is that someone up the chain realized he
is also the creator of Sonarr and just nobody wanted to take ownership of that
potential liability.

~~~
person_of_color
This.

Choose your side projects wisely.

~~~
kayone
I really doubt it was it. Sonarr was one of the topics we talked about during
the first meeting at Microsoft Vancouver.

Even if that was the case, I have no regrets.

~~~
person_of_color
I would say engineers have a different perspective than upper management.

~~~
throwaway2048
You are making a total shot in the dark guess

------
smcl
Every time I see the “Microsoft <3 open source” stuff I get really suspicious,
and this kinda confirms that I’m right to be. I’m grateful of their more open
culture these days (dotnet alone is a big achievement) ... but I feel like
there’s been a number of incidents like these which snap me back to reality
and remind me they’re really just paying lip service to the idea and don’t
truly buy into open source.

~~~
globular-toast
Microsoft is a public traded company. You can safely assume that anything they
do is really about generating value for shareholders. Of course they don't
"love open source". But they probably love what it does for them (e.g. enable
them to run Azure).

------
one2know
Microsoft is the king of fake interviews. Absolute snakes. Netflix too. Funny
how when you don't work for a competitor no one wants to talk to you, then you
work for a competitor or are a competitor and the VP's want to interview you.

Look, people, don't waste anyone's time unless you are going to HIRE someone.
If you have a product that a big tech company is interested in, acquisition is
the only path you should be considering and you should get help. Wasn't there
an article by a hacker news founder which basically said: don't talk to big
companies until you are ready to sell, even then get help.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
I remember the "good old days" of the Microsoft Borg.

They were _infamous_ for getting small companies in under NDA, then grabbing
their tech, and dumping the small companies (often putting them out of
business). They are not alone in this (Apple has done the same thing. I think
they even have a term for it -"to Watson" * ). It's just that MS was the most
egregious.

It makes me sad to see they are still doing it. I've been fairly impressed by
what Nadella has done.

* _EDIT: As adamdavidson pointed out, the term that everyone uses is "Sherlocked."_

~~~
amdavidson
I believe the more common version of that term is "Sherlocked"

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
You are correct.

------
ReverseCold
Reminds me of this scene from Silicon Valley (HBO):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlwwVuSUUfc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlwwVuSUUfc)

~~~
henry_bone
Definitely a classic brainrape.

------
AnonC
I can’t imagine how deeply upset you must feel over this.

> 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.

I read “ _inspired_ ” as “blatantly copied”. Not shocked at this from
Microsoft. But not giving due credit is just a rip off. Seems like Andrew and
whoever else corresponded with you were arm twisted by jerks (or had more
jerks in their teams).

If anyone in the Winget team is reading this, your organization sucks. It
seems to be showing signs of Microsoft from the ‘90s.

------
lukeschlather
The really sad thing is that I still don't think Microsoft has actually solved
the package manager problem in any meaningful way. WinGet feels like just yet
another subtly incompatible package standard.

I would say Microsoft should buy Chocolatey but they would probably just ruin
it. (Not to say this is a uniquely Microsoft problem; it's reminiscent of the
Pipenv/Poetry/virtualenv... mess in the Python community.)

~~~
ryan29
I'm convinced the sole purpose of some open source projects are to be good
enough to prevent other open source projects from filling the void, but bad
enough to keep from competing with vested commercial interests.

This might just be one of those cases. Why would Microsoft want to invest in
another distribution platform when they already have the Microsoft Store where
they can do whatever they want?

Sure, WinGet has an MIT license, but that doesn't mean anything. The only
important thing is who gets to commit to the manifest(s) on the master branch.
That's Microsoft. They own it. They control it. They curate it. They decide
who gets to distribute via it.

I'd bet money they'll tie it in to Azure somehow at some point.

~~~
jpalomaki
Microsoft is likely looking for a solution that would allow easy distribution
of software in enterprise context without having to repackage it.

Having a widely accepted and used package format would solve that. You could
just pick the package for notepad++ and others and push them to workstations
via Intune.

~~~
throwaway2048
They already have MSI though?

~~~
corty
There were attempts, but never any followthrough. Even MS doesn't distribute
all of its software as MSI.

------
pfortuny
After reading the second e-mail it is clear that they are trying to do
something "official" and that their interest in the specific person is low (to
say it mildly). Full of "going-forward" and similar corporate-speak. DANGER
DANGER DANGER: when someone loses natural language, he is no longer speaking
for himself.

What a pitiful world we live in.

~~~
dandare
I wish someone would write a serious corporate-speak dictionary, list the most
used phrases and what they usually mean, explain different levels of formality
etc.

~~~
corty
Seconded. As a foreigner it is even harder to recognize such phrases for what
they are and interpret them correctly.

------
ak39
Man, this hurt to read. Keivan’s response is the right one. But I wonder if
the arrangements and outcome would have been different had AppGet been closed
source.

This is just not cricket from team Microsoft.

~~~
intern4tional
This isn't secret news, but when you interview at MS there is always a secret
/ hidden interviewer. This is publicly known information from Cracking the
Coding interview. This person is called the as appropriate and you only meet
them if you pass all the prior interviews.

Per his writeup, he did not meet that person, which means that he most likely
did not pass the interview.

He also for some reason didn't follow up on the results of the interview for 6
months, which is unique as most candidates will reach out. Assuming he
actually filled out a job requisition, which he probably did to interview, he
also should have gotten status from that requisition, so things are a little
fishy.

I do not know anything about his case directly, but I would bet that he did
not pass the interview and a decision was made to not bring him on as a
result.

If Microsoft was trolling him to just pick his brain, they would have done
more than two small events, and wouldn't have bothered to reach out to tell
him they were releasing a product.

This response also burns any bridges that he had built with the team. He could
have still potentially made something of his product if he had kept that
relationship open and used his leverage as an existing package manager owner
to influence WinGet.

If I was him, I would have at a minimum asked for feedback far earlier than
wait for 6 months.

~~~
ahelwer
Reminds me of:
[https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en](https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en)

How exactly could a PM interview process (which is just asking you to walk
through a bunch of design scenarios) give a stronger hiring signal than having
developed a product the company wanted to acqui-hire? Honestly somewhat
insulting that they made him go through a full external interview loop. At
most it should have been some informal chats of the sort you get when
transferring teams internally.

~~~
ryandrake
> Honestly somewhat insulting that they made him go through a full external
> interview loop.

Wait, what? So if someone is a "name brand" celebrity, they should get to jump
the queue and coast by with an "informal chat?" How is that fair? I don't care
if I'm interviewing John Carmack, he's getting the same evaluation process I
would give to any other senior candidate. Software Engineering's got enough
problems with interviewing--it doesn't need an aristocracy that gets special
treatment.

~~~
nsainsbury
That's absurd. What he has built literally demonstrates he has the ability
that the role requires - which is entirely what the entire interview loop is
trying to ascertain. If you can ascertain that a person has a skillset without
that loop, it is completely unnecessary.

~~~
loriverkutya
That is simply not true, he wrote the package manager as a side project, that
says nothing about if he is a good cultural fit for Microsoft.

------
MikusR
The title of this should really be changed to the more descriptive subtitle:
"The story of how Microsoft embraced and then killed AppGet."

~~~
boromi
Not really. Afterall his AppGet package was open source....

~~~
ralphstodomingo
Last time I checked, something being open-source doesn't mean corps like MSFT
can shit on them.

~~~
WJW
The MIT license expressly allows for shitting on software though. In fact it's
allowed for anyone, not just megacorps.

------
jdonaldson
I was curious about hearing Microsoft's side of the story. There's an existing
issue filed against the winget repo for this, if you're interested, subscribe
to the issue: [https://github.com/microsoft/winget-
cli/issues/353](https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/issues/353)

~~~
TeeWEE
I had the same idea! I'm supporting this issue.

Lets use github & opensource itself to ensure the Appget developers gets his
fair share!

------
WrtCdEvrydy
I wonder if one day we'll know of all the stories of people who got wined-
dined-fucked by the large corporations who then release their own version of
an existing product.

~~~
banana_giraffe
I doubt it. I've hinted at in comments here in the past, but I have one such
story. It's a footnote, at best, in MS's history, and a thing for a now-dead
product, but they turned what I thought was a cool product into their own
thing then disappeared it through internal MS politics.

I don't tell the story in any details since I don't want those details getting
back to the real me and having a negative impact on my career for whatever
reason.

~~~
solarkraft
How could a gigantic corporation stealing your idea be seen as negative?

~~~
colejohnson66
The word “stealing” is a big hint

~~~
FeepingCreature
He means "seen as a black mark for you", not for the company.

------
kasabali
I'm sorry to hear that. When I compared various package managers few months
ago I liked AppGet most. What's saddening is winget doesn't even do half of
what's appget is capable of right now.

------
mr_toad
You could argue that these sort of corporate shenanigans are a case for
continuing to maintain an independent trusted alternative package manager.

------
panchtatvam
This is the Embrace, extend, and extinguish policy of Microsoft. I just hate
how these corporates deal with talent. To them it is nothing more than a
profit to make.

------
GordonS
I know this might be unpopular with OSS idealists, but I wonder if it might be
time for a new license, or indeed if there are already (small 'o') open source
licenses that would help with this sort of things.

What I'm thinking of is a license _almost_ identical to the MIT and/or Apache
2.0 license, but with a clause that prohibits mega-corps from wholesale
rebranding and using your code.

I have a few OSS projects myself, and help maintain a larger one, and I love
the _spirit_ of OSS, so I'm a little split on this one. But I don't really
think Microsoft's actions here are truely in the _spirit_ of OSS. Yes, the
license allows it, but is it aligned with the OSS ethos? Is it "right"?

~~~
nojs
Wouldn’t that be GPL?

~~~
GordonS
No, that puts restrictions on _everyone_ , which are so harsh many
organisations (even startups) wouldn't touch GPL'd code with a bargepole.

I was thinking more along the ideas of adding restrictions only for
corporations of a certain size, or perhaps only if they intend to use it in a
certain way - kind of like the licenses that exclude large cloud operators
like AWS from using your work without contributing back.

------
_rrnv
Seriously, business never was and never will be a nice place. For every
company in Silicon Valley there's a story about a dickmove, both in startups
and corporations. Yes, Microsoft screwed you over. Capitalise on the drama
buzz and move on.

------
harry8
Re-licensee all your appget code as GPL v3. Everything about it. It might put
the wind up them a little. They hate GPL.

Good example of the strength of the GPL for projects you want to be open and
don't want mega-corp to embrace and close.

BSD, MIT etc if you're fine with that being done for the project.

There are other dimensions for licensing, this is just one consideration of
many in your decision.

~~~
chii
You cannot retroactively relicense code - only new code. Microsoft can just
take the last version that's not GPL.

This is why if i were making an open source project, it will start off with
GPLv3, with a commercial paid license if anyone wants to avoid the terms of
the GPL. That gives the best of both worlds - open access to anyone, and if
they want to modify, they must also be willing to contribute in some way.

~~~
harry8
Absolutely they keep whatever they took under the license they took it.
Obviously.

And they better have that well documented. Legal might have something to say
about it, for example.

It gives then a headache and it tells them you don't like what they did.

------
benatkin
I don't want to support this company. What are good alternatives to GitHub,
TypeScript, npm, and Visual Studio Code (besides Atom)?

~~~
BetaDeltaAlpha
Gitlab is a contender for sure. I use it at my dayjob. I don't know if any of
the other big editors have caught up to VSCode in terms of ecosystem though.

~~~
toyg
Are you kidding me? The Intellij ecosystem alone pre-dates vscode by decades
and it’s likely much bigger already. And if you look at emacs and vim... well.

------
creativecupcak3
It amazes me how level-headed the author really is about all this. I feel like
I'm a lot more upset about this than the author. And, just like him, I don't
care that they "forked" the project. I'm upset of how cunning of Microsoft
this whole thing feels.

------
kristofarkas
It's understandable that everybody is blaming Microsoft for the way this was
handled. But let's remember that we are only seeing one side of this story, we
don't know what _really_ went on from Microsoft and the team's side there.

~~~
kkapelon
It doesn't really matter. What ever happened on the Microsoft side should be
communicated to him. The fact that they ghosted him after flying him on site
and milking him for information looks bad anyway.

What scenario do you have in mind that would make Microsoft look in a positive
way in this incident?

------
dzonga
op, was done dirty. classic move, even SV had an episode on this kinda
business. feign, an acquire-hire. and pick the team's brains out. then launch
competing product. I think PG had another essay on this too, never talk to
business dev folks

------
jasonhansel
This is why it's important to license FOSS projects under the (A)GPL, rather
than the MIT license. It makes it far less profitable for companies to steal
your ideas/code, and ensures that anything based on your work will put users
first.

~~~
shp0ngle
They didn’t copy the code, just the APIs and ideas.

In another words, if ideas were copyrighted, GNU/Linux wouldn’t exist.

~~~
chii
Their lawyers will have a hard time justifying that none of the original
source was used to create their new win-get project, given that the author of
appget has met with the engineering team directly.

So if it were GPL, microsoft would likely need to license their new winget
project under GPL, which would be a win/win for open source.

~~~
throw_m239339
> Their lawyers will have a hard time justifying that none of the original
> source was used to create their new win-get project, given that the author
> of appget has met with the engineering team directly.

Exactly

------
christopoulos
This is why I personally am very reluctant to the sharing of well founded
ideas on platforms such as github, in hackathons, in competitions, in recorded
speeches etc. How unlikely it may seem, this is a great example that ideas
with traction do get picked up and copied, and the originator screwed over. I
honestly sometimes feel as if the openness is pushed and saluted, but with the
ulterior motive to skim for ideas.

Edit: corrected autocorrect

------
AHappyCamper
It still stings to be treated like that. Especially when you acted in good
faith at all times with MS. Sorry this happened to you buds.

------
onemoresoop
This is really sad, not only did they copy your idea, not paid you anything
(yeah, some kind of azure credit is not really costing them anything) nor gave
you credit, they wasted your time and gave you a humiliating silent treatment.
At a smaller company I tend to think that wouldn’t have happened but Im not
sure to be honest. I hope that you get the credit and end up in the place you
deserve to be. I wonder if Andrew is an a-hole or he really just couldnt do
anything about it, it is possible that they didn’t want to remunerate you for
legal reasons, in the sense that you could have asked for more later on. But
no credit? I think Andrew may be as I first thought

------
pgt
Hey Microsoft, whenever you do this, you lose all the goodwill you've built
with developers. You have put me back in a buying position where I'm now
thinking: how can I cancel my paid GitHub & Azure accounts?

------
UkiahSmith
Never forget,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_law...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics#Microsoft_lawsuit)

------
lame88
Fuck anyone callous enough to take something as far as an onsite trip with the
pretense of a job and then just ghost them. I can't think of a much clearer
way to show that much disrespect of someone and their time. And that's just
the tip of the iceberg in this case. Remember things like this whenever you
see the "microsoft <3 linux" slogan and the rest of the PR facade people are
all too willing to swallow.

~~~
foobarbazetc
This exact thing happens all the time. And not just Microsoft.

Usually you sign something that prohibits you from talking about the meetings,
though.

~~~
godzillabrennus
Can confirm.

Heck, I’ve been given an interview day for a c-level position at a billion
dollar company by the entire executive team and board only to never hear back
from them again.

~~~
foobarbazetc
Yeah, I speak from personal experience.

Years later I met one of the people who screwed me over — they’d left that
company by then — and they apologized.

------
wwwigham
I feel bad for the OP for getting ghosted by the Microsoft hiring process, I'd
at least want a prompt response of _some_ kind; but the package manager
features OP says are "copied" are common to cocoapods, homebrew, and others...
Winget is certainly not the first, and probably won't be the last package
manager to take that tack, so I don't find that appeal terribly compelling
(The bad hiring process though... That's annoying). If winget is a "copy" of
appget, it doesn't look like a very _good_ or _complete_ one at a glance, so
the author could probably keep at appget, what with the publicity; winget
doesn't even uninstall or upgrade packages (yet, at least), so it's just a
glorified search bar strapped to msiexec (not to lessen anyone's effort or
plans, software takes a lot of time and effort to build).

If the JS package manager scene has taught me anything, it's that so long as
one another's manifests/registries are readable, developers will happily try
multiple programs which actually do the managing, and, to some degree, a
little competition is what actually makes things gradually improve. I, at
least, hadn't heard of appget prior to today. (Just chocolatey and oneget,
both of which I'd used, both of which are likewise "invalidated" by winget,
but persist regardless.) But I can only reasonably consider it if its primary
maintainer reconsiders its "dead" status.

------
j-pb
Whelp there goes any chance I'm going to consider any M$ products to replace
my Macbook as a main dev and work machine.

Looks like the only viable remaining ecosystem is a linux laptop...

------
julienfr112
the Bad PR involved here largely offset what a good bonus to kayone whould
have been. If it move the needle, say between Azure and Gcloud, on 10% of the
thousand of read of this post, MS could end up losing millions of dollars a
year.

------
sneak
When you release free (as in freedom) software, you are not entitled to
revenue sharing when people use or modify that software, or if people use the
ideas in that software to make new, from-scratch software.

I think Microsoft is a terrible organization and will rejoice the day they
finally cease to exist as a concern, but they didn’t do anything wrong here.

PHP didn’t “rip off” Perl, nor did CoffeeScript “rip off” ruby. All the other
PoW or PoS blockchains didn’t “rip off” Satoshi.

He needs to stop seeing ideas and concepts as “his” that are property that can
be stolen.

Why should they acquihire when they can just reimplement?

Ideas aren’t property, and if you have a good idea, and someone else takes it
and runs with it and makes software used by millions that works better than if
you hadn’t had that idea, that is the system working as intended, and,
ultimately, his ideas, now published and infecting the world, being writ large
and used by humans.

I’m not some corporate apologist, but he should be proud. (He also probably
should have, back when, started a company designed to be digestible that they
could have acquired, if he wanted to participate financially, like MySQL or
RedHat did.)

~~~
RandallBrown
Taking someone all the way through the interview process, then ghosting them,
is doing something wrong.

Add in the fact that they had planned on buying his app outright told him they
would hire him instead to speed up the process, and it's an especially crummy
thing to do.

~~~
sneak
I’m not sure I agree with that. No news is the equivalent of all other times:
no deal/no hire. I think the game theoretic optimal choice from a liability
standpoint is to simply stop sending further messages if you decide not to do
business with someone, especially given all of the current litigation-happy
people there are out there these days. (Even if you win a suit, you lose lots
of money.)

It avoids the possibility of obsessive types getting agitated over an explicit
rejection, et c. Anyone clever will see ghosting for what it plainly is: an
explicit rejection.

It’s just business, not some trusted friend ghosting you on lunch plans and
not calling. This is how business works, and it’s not rude, it’s just the
protocol.

~~~
colejohnson66
It’s possible for something to be “protocol”, but also rude at the same time

------
lostmsu
That is exactly why I am not open sourcing my .NET bindings for TensorFlow.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
I don't know the details of your project, but what if you open sourced under
the GPL?

I feels as though the world has soured on the GPL in recent years, but
whenever I see this type of sentiment—that open sourcing work is just a gift
from small developers to big tech companies, or something thereabouts—I think,
wouldn't the GPL solve that problem?

Sure, big companies _can_ still use GPL'd code, but they're forced to give
back as much as they take, which is _exactly_ the outcome you want.

(This doesn't necessarily apply to the situation with AppGet, however.)

~~~
na85
By Eben Moglen's own admission[0], the GPL has never been successfully
enforced in a court of law, even against criminal infringers.

It seems toothless to me. A relic from a byegone era when companies cared
about ethical behavior.

[0] [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-
gpl.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.html)

~~~
colejohnson66
The GPL _has_ been used successfully in courts of law. It’s not common as most
violators just open source when called out, or settle when sued, but it has
worked before. A famous example is D-Link using the Linux kernel in their
routers. After a lawsuit in Germany, D-Link had to release their changes.[0]

I don’t understand this idea that a license that the author willingly released
his code under is unenforceable, but EULAs are?

[0]: [https://web.archive.org/web/20141007073104/http://gpl-
violat...](https://web.archive.org/web/20141007073104/http://gpl-
violations.org/news/20060922-dlink-judgement_frankfurt.html)

~~~
tracker1
Of course with all/most US routers generally taking only signed ROMs, it's
mostly useless to even have the code.

I wish they'd just create something closer to tomato than the flashy, less
useful interfaces.

~~~
colejohnson66
That problem is called TiVoization. It’s addressed with the 3rd version of the
GPL. Sadly, Linus is adamantly against that clause.

~~~
chii
> Linus is adamantly against that clause.

oh i didnt know he was adamant against the clause - i thought that he didn't
want to force it upon the many existing users of linux.

~~~
colejohnson66
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=PaKIZ7gJlRU](https://youtube.com/watch?v=PaKIZ7gJlRU)

He also has refused to release any of his projects under GPLv3 (or even “v2 or
later”).

~~~
kasabali
Which is too bad because CDDL is compatible with GPLv3 thus that would make
integration of ZFS possible

------
astn-austin
As far as being offended that they called it WinGet when you had a package
manager called AppGet.

MS already had a "package manager" called OneGet. They also have a package
manager called NuGet.

I don't see any issue with MS replacing OneGet with WinGet.

Or why the name WinGet offends AppGet, or AptGet, or OneGet, or NuGet, etc.

I think [name]Get is pretty common.

------
jonnypotty
Mate, that sucks. Sorry, fuck those dick heads. That email, meant to aswage
their guilt, hey we gave _you_ knowledge of the release date, don't you feel
special. Its like people pushing infront of you on the road, nearly making you
crash and then thanking you. Grrrr

------
wazoox
Typical Microsoft. If they're interested in what you're doing, be acquired or
be crushed. Microsoft loves opensource; they love linux too. Like I love
mashed potatoes : well cooked, thinky crushed then with some cream on top.

------
madc
This is who owns GitHub now.

------
astn-austin
I don't get it. You open source something (make it public) so everyone can
benefit in any way, inspiring, forking, extending, giving back, etc. Someone
does so and your offended?

------
shp0ngle
In comparison, Apple hosted MacPorts, an early OS X package manager, and
started to be involved in it directly.

(nowadays MacPorts is not really necessary with Homebrew around, but that’s
another thing)

~~~
grzm
Homebrew is recapitulating all of the work that previous package managers have
done, while making choices like analytics and stomping on /usr/local by
default that others wouldn't consider. I think there's still a place for
MacPorts.

~~~
shp0ngle
I honestly _really_ like how HomeBrew doesn't require "sudo" for anything.
Random stuff I download from internet should _not_ require system permissions
to do anything they want. That part of HB design is what sells it for me.

~~~
saagarjha
Things you install system-wide in a folder designated as such should not
really be done so by a package manager that makes insecure choices on how it
installs software and maintains permissions on that directory.

------
pwdisswordfish2
Posts critical of Microsft usually draw a set respone on HN. It has evolved
over time.

1\. Please stop picking on Microsoft, it is unfair

2\. Microsoft has changed, look at ____ and _____

I am curious what the next one will be.

------
hasanalikhattak
It's really shameful how a prestigious service like AppGet for neglected
Windows users got screwed by Microsoft. My sincere thoughts are with kayone
and AppGet.

------
jlengrand
Maybe @Microsoft has something in the drawers that would be interesting for OP
and propose as a contingency plan? That'd be a way to make amend :)

------
ecmascript
Just don't develop large open source stuff for large companies. It's not worth
it, they will always screw you if they can.

For example, make a great app for any platform and they will most likely
incorporate the exact concept since it's successful.

This is why you should focus on the web, publishing on your own and then they
can't simply steamroll you in the same way since the platform is open.

------
MrGilbert
This is the reason I'm hesitant to open source an idea I have to build as a
SaaS. I'm a big proponent of self-hosting, so I'd like to offer my SaaS for
self-hosting to anyone that wants to. There is always a risk of <Big Megacorp>
might come around, think "oh, that's neat!", and away they are with a
marketing budget miles higher than mine.

------
rashil2000
Hi, just wanted to chime in and ask a question. Wouldn't MS (or any company
for that matter) get in legal trouble for endorsing/crediting a developer who
has a history of making software that uses/manages pirated content? The
software I'm talking about is Sonarr, and it’s made by Keivan himself. I'm not
aware of the legalities here, so asking.

------
canibal57
Keep your ear to the grindstone, bud...

[https://youtu.be/OHSYWIAAY2o](https://youtu.be/OHSYWIAAY2o)

------
simonblack
Just in case you weren't around in the early 1990s, what happened to you was
practically identical to what happened to Stac Electronics. They had a hard-
drive compression program, got into 'negotiations' with Microsoft, then
nothing. A little while later, Microsoft incorporated their DoubleSpace into
MSDOS.

 _plus ça change, plus c 'est la même chose_

------
x32n23nr
Is there an open-source license that prohibits the use of software if your
company's yearly revenue is higher than < X > ?

~~~
rectang
There is not, because that would not be compatible with one of the non-
discrimination clauses of the Open Source Definition.

[https://opensource.org/osd](https://opensource.org/osd)

> _5\. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups_

------
perlgeek
I'm somewhat reminded of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish)

I know it wasn't the exact same playbook being used, but I think from the
author's perspective, it very much feels like it.

------
newmac
This is unfortunately not much different than MS/Github's treatment of npm.
They brought npm in, had lots of conversations, and then released a competing
product. In the case of npm, they went on to buy them on the cheap.

There was a lot to be annoyed with npm about, but this isn't the kind of
behaviour we should reward.

------
chethiya
There is an issue created in winget GitHub page suggesting to donate appget
-[https://github.com/microsoft/winget-
cli/issues/353](https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/issues/353)

------
jgeerts
Went to the github Microsoft package and came across this issue, posted by one
of you.

[https://github.com/microsoft/winget-
cli/issues/353](https://github.com/microsoft/winget-cli/issues/353)

------
brnt
On a tangentially related note: how did getdeb.net die? Used to use this a
decade ago, but then suddenly the domain went blank and now is taken over by a
squatter I see.

------
nailer
Dupe of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23305068](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23305068)

------
dusted
Sounds like Microsoft. Sorry you had to try that personally, I'm certain it's
stressful and frustrating, thank you for writing about it and sharing.

------
kissgyorgy
"The Day Microsoft stole my work I done for free on AppGet" would be a more
accurate title...

------
olaf
what do I learn from that? I will not talk with a Microsoft representative
before they pay me at least 5000 US$ consulting fees.

Never give them something for free, not one minute of my precious lifetime.

They seem to me as 'friendly' as the aliens in the "Mars attacks" movie.

------
typenil
Good to have another data point to temper my opinion of Microsoft. It had been
rising lately.

------
qball12
Aaah, good old Microsoft is back!

------
Uhrheber
Embrace, extend, and extinguish.

Microsoft being Microsoft. Some things never change.

------
LordHumungous
Is appget dead yet? Is the windows solution that much better?

------
jmgpeeters
I thought Microsoft had changed in recent years. :/

------
de_watcher
They've Bukkited you like Mojang/MS did.

------
scoutt
You have been Microsoft'd.

------
pojntfx
AGPL-3.0 is a great thing.

------
rStar
Fuck em

------
a_imho
tldr; new Microsoft hearting open source

------
draw_down
Microsoft is really good at copying. I mean this in as value-neutral a way as
possible.

~~~
ASalazarMX
We can find comfort in the thought that they're not a Chinese company, whose
copying kills kittens and freedom.

------
1propionyl
I don't think there's any need to blame Microsoft here. It's not like they've
ever done something like this before.

If they had, surely they'd have learned from the backlash.

------
scotty79
Isn't this completely usual corporate behavior? Even if the little guys
building stuff make attempts to do the right thing, like contact and include
people from outside who made the thing they are building upon, then at some
level, at some stage, the arrangement gets stalled into oblivion to the point
that the thing is already done and nothing can be handled gracefully anymore.

------
WesolyKubeczek
1\. Release some code under a permissive license

2\. Start complaining when companies exercise precisely the rights you have
given them

~~~
1f60c
You’re putting words in the author’s mouth, because that doesn’t seem like the
problem.

The problem was “the slow and dreadful communication speed” and “the total
radio silence at the end”, and:

> [T]he […] announcement. AppGet, which is objectively where most ideas for
> WinGet came from, was only mentioned as another package manager that just
> happened to exist; While other package managers that WinGet shares very
> little with were mentioned and explained much more deliberately.

------
DanielBMarkham
Let us suppose a world where there are 17 computer programs we need.

apt-get is one of them.

Great program! It has done the job we've needed for decades!

Millions of people are happy. Is there an ethical reason that should change?

