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How Microsoft Killed AppGet



Last week, Microsoft released WinGet's package manager as part of its announcements at the Build 2020 conference . Many considered this another proof of Microsoft's rapprochement with the Open Source movement. But not the Canadian developer Keivan Beigi, the author of the free package manager AppGet . Now he is trying to understand what happened over the past 12 months, during which he talked with representatives of Microsoft.

In any case, Ceyvan is now stopping the development of AppGet . Client and server services go into maintenance mode immediately until August 1, 2020, after which they will be closed forever.

In his blog, the author gives a chronology of events . It all started a year ago (July 3, 2019), when he received this letter from Andrew, head of the development team at Microsoft:

Ceyvan,

I manage the Windows App Model development team and, in particular, the application deployment team. I just wanted to send you a short note to thank you for creating the appget - this is a great addition to the Windows ecosystem, which makes the life of Windows developers much easier. We will probably be in Vancouver in the coming weeks to meet with other companies, but if you have the time, we would like to meet with you and your team to get feedback on how to make your life easier in developing appget.

Ceyvan was thrilled: his hobby project was spotted at Microsoft! He answered the letter - and two months later, after exchanging letters, he came to a meeting at the Microsoft representative office in Vancouver. The meeting was attended by Andrew and another development manager from the same product group. Ceyvan says they had a great time - they talked about the ideas behind AppGet, what was not very well done in the current package managers on Windows, and what he plans for future versions of AppGet. The developer got the impression that Microsoft wants to help the project: they themselves asked what they could do for him. He mentioned that it would be nice to get some loans on Azure, some documentation on the new MSIX package format., and it would be nice to fix issues with individual download links.

A week later, Andrew sent a new letter in which he actually invited Andrew to work at Microsoft: “We want to make some significant changes to the distribution of software on Windows, and there is a great opportunity to help in what Windows and the application distribution system in Azure / Microsoft look like 365. With that in mind, have you considered spending more time on appget, potentially at Microsoft? ” He wrote.

Cavean at first hesitated a bit - he did not want to go to Microsoft to work on the Windows Store, the MSI engine and other systems for deploying applications. But they assured him that all his time he would only work on AppGet. After about a month of lengthy email correspondence, they came to the conclusion that the agreement would be very similar to acqui-hire - Microsoft hires the developer along with his program, and they decide whether to rename it to something else, or it becomes Microsoft AppGet.

Ceyvan writes that throughout the process he did not quite understand what his role in Microsoft would be. What will be his responsibilities? Who should I report to? Who will report to him? He tried to clarify some of these answers during these slow negotiations, but never received a clear answer.

After several more months of very slow email negotiations, he was told that the hiring process through BizDev would take a very long time. An alternative to speed up the process would be to simply hire him with a “bonus”, after which he will begin to work on transferring the code base. He had no objections, so they planned several meetings / interviews in Redmond.

The process has begun. On December 5, 2019, Cavean flew to Seattle - to Microsoft headquarters - and spent the whole day there, interviewing different people and negotiating with Andrew. In the evening I took a taxi to the airport - and returned to Vancouver.

He was told to wait for a call from the personnel department. But then, for six months, Ceyvan had not heard anything from Microsoft.. Until mid-May 2020, when an old friend of Andrew announced the release of WinGet the next day:

Hi Ceyvan, I hope that you and your family are doing well - it seems like British Columbia is doing a good job with Cove compared to the United States.

I am very sorry that the position of the project manager did not work. I would like to take the time to say how much we appreciate your input and ideas. We developed a package manager for Windows, and the first preview will be live tomorrow at Build 2020. We will also mention appget on our blog, because we believe that there is room for various package managers on Windows. Our package manager is also based on GitHub, but obviously with our own implementation and so on. It also comes out with open source code, so obviously we will be glad to any of your input.

Ceyvan was not too surprised. By that time, it had already become apparent that he would not be invited to work at Microsoft, this did not upset him, because he doubted that he wanted to work in such a large company.

But the real surprise awaited him the next day, when he saw the GitHub repository : “When I showed the repository to my wife, the first thing she said was:“ They named it WinGet? Are you serious??" I didn’t even have to explain to her how the basic mechanics, terminology, format and structure of the manifest , even the folder structure of the package repository, are inspired by AppGet. ”

“Am I upset that Microsoft, a $ 1.4 trillion company, has finally gotten together and released a decent package manager for its flagship product? No, they should have done this many years ago. They should not have spoiled the Windows Store as much as they did, ”Ceyvan writes. - In reality, no matter how hard I tried to promote AppGet, it will never grow as fast as Microsoft's solution. I didn’t create AppGet to get rich, become famous, or get a job at Microsoft. I created AppGet because I believed that we, Windows users, also deserve a decent experience in managing applications. What bothers me is how exactly all this was done. Slow and terrible communication. At the end, complete radio silence. But most of all, this announcement hit me. AppGetwhich objectively is the source of most ideas for WinGet, was mentioned only as another package manager, whichjust by chance exists in this world . At the same time, other package managers, with which WinGet has very little in common, were mentioned and explained much more thoroughly. ”

Ceyvan Beigi is not upset. He says that there is no silver lining. At the very least, WinGet is built on a solid foundation and has the potential for success. And Windows users may finally get a decent package manager. And for him, this story has become a valuable experience: "Live a century - learn a century."

He explains that copying code is not a problem, that’s the essence of Open Source. And he does not mean copying the general concept of package / application managers. But if you look at similar projects in OS X, Homebrew, Chocolaty, Scoop, ninite, etc., then everyone has their own peculiarities. However, WinGet works in much the same way as AppGet: “Want to know how Microsoft WinGet works? Go and read an article I wrote two years ago about how AppGet works , ”he writes.

Ceyvan was only upset that his work was not mentioned anywhere.

For reference. “Embrace, extend and extinguish” is a phrase as defined by the US Department of Justice., was used by Microsoft to describe a strategy for deploying software that uses widely accepted standards in the industry. The strategy was to expand these standards and further use these differences to gain an advantage over competitors.

In the case of AppGet, one cannot say that this strategy was applied in its pure form, but some elements can be considered. Proponents of free software consider it a morally unacceptable mode of action and are still suspicious of Microsoft's initiative to introduce the Linux subsystem to the Windows operating system ( WSL ). They say that Microsoft, by its very nature, has not changed and will never change.



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