winget install learning

Andrew Clinick

Last week we announced a package manager preview for Windows. Our goal is to provide a great product to our customers and community where everyone can contribute and receive recognition. The last thing that we want to do is alienate anyone in the process. That is why we are building it on GitHub in the open where everyone can contribute. Over the past couple of days we’ve listened and learned from our community and clearly we did not live up to this goal. More specifically, we failed to live up to this with Keivan and AppGet. This was the last thing that we wanted.

The desire to use GitHub as the basis for our package manager germinated as a way to lean into how developers are building their apps. GitHub allows us to have an open repository and a way to integrate with DevOps pipelines for app publishing etc.

This GitHub based approach led us to AppGet and Keivan. We talked with Keivan last summer about potential opportunities to work together to deliver the Windows Package Manager. During those conversations we were impressed with Keivan’s insights into the package management world on Windows and with his desire for there to be a great package management experience on Windows.

There are a number of qualities in AppGet that really helped us get to a better product direction for WinGet:

  • No scripts during install – something that we completely agreed with and don’t allow with MSIX
  • Rich manifest definition within GitHub – the power of being open combined with rich declarative meta data about the app is so important to meet goal #1
  • Support all types of Windows applications installers
  • Seamless updates for applications in the repository

I want to take this opportunity to thank Keivan for his thoughtful approach to AppGet and working with us. We will be open sourcing our service code into our our WinGet repository on GitHub so that we can work together with Keivan and others to enable a better WinGet repository listing service.

24 comments

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  • Mystery Man 0

    Oh, yeah. Mr. Keivan Beigi is the most recent hit of the tech news. He says you’ve ghosted him.

  • Tyler Crandall 0

    The last thing that we want to do is alienate anyone in the process.

    Your organization already alienated plenty with the action of creating a ripoff version of Appget even though the original creator would work with you, although it’s legal to do so, there’s still a matter of morality where you didn’t credit the original creator for any of his work or idea, how about doing the right thing and credit the original creator for the idea he came up with at least?

    We talked with Keivan last summer about potential opportunities to work together to deliver the Windows Package Manager.

    Ok? Did your organization at least address the matter of reimbursing him for the travel cost mentioned in Kevian blog at the very last paragraph? https://keivan.io/the-day-appget-died/

    Your entire post doesn’t really address anything and it reflects even more poorly on how your organization handles this, so I would recommend trying to rectify the few points above.

  • Nicolas Musset 0

    You are a disgrace and should resign. Stealing someone else’s work end then refusing to acknowledge it is the worst of behavior.

    You are putting at shadow on a decade of effort by Microsoft to work more closely and better with the open-source community. Were I your manager, I you would fire you on the spot.

  • Jibao Mansaray 1

    Almost in every other sentence you mentioned GitHub as if stealing someone’s hard work and hosting it on GitHub makes it right. Your ethics to open source is worrying. You embraceed the guy and stabbed him. You are a disgraced to open source.

    • Malthe Cwlnd 0

      Great point. 🙂

      BR

      Tavlor

      Mynewart.se

  • Lajos Marton 1

    Everything is clear. MS likes open-source, because of they can steal more easily anybody’s stuff and ideas? 😀

    • amir Ahmadi 0

      Agree

  • Roger Johansson 0

    -“Sorry not sorry”

  • MgSam 0

    Sorry to say but I agree with the other comments. The minimum that should happen is that Mr. Beigi should be well compensated for his work that you guys stole. Otherwise, he should get a lawyer and evaluate his options. Pumping someone for information while dangling a disingenuous job offer is the absolute lowest behavior around.

    How expensive would it have been to just buy him out the right way? It would have been a trivial amount of money for Microsoft. The path you took instead is really disgusting.

  • Punky _Rockz 0

    Rip someone and say oops. You guys should have been honest and paid. Atleast 10 or 20 grand, i am sure that guy would have helped you till the end with his sweat and blood. For Microsoft it is taking a bucket of water from ocean. You ripped someone of their dreams and you say that was the last thing we wanted. Being a web developer of php mysql and app developer in c, i have started to use kubuntu. The day that linux battery management is good i will delete my windows partition

  • Mystery Man 0

    My, my! There are some poignant comments here!

    Now, I’m not going as far as saying that you, Mr. Andrew Clinick, must “resign” or anything. I don’t want to judge without having all the facts and without being the appointed mediator. Mr. Beigi wrote that he has no copyright claims and isn’t even sad that you guys have realized his idea. His complaint was that Microsoft has ghosted him and didn’t reimburse him for his troubles, despite an advance promise to do so. Again, I don’t know the truth of any of this; I guess I’ll never know.

    But I know this: If someone accused me of having stolen his lunch money and giving him a wedgie, I’d do a lot better than writing a blog post with a nonsensical title that approaches the matter sideways.

    • Nima Kamoosi 0

      +1

  • Alexander Baggett 0

    Forking/copying someone’s code in the opensource community is not inherently bad. In fact it is encouraged.

    Failing to credit someone whose open source code you copied is a faux pas at best or license violation at worst.

    But courting someone about a potential job opportunity and then stealing their code and then ghosting them, that really reflects poorly on the image Microsoft has been trying to build with the open source community.

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