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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/) 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.
Robert patented it but still megacorps tried to screw him over because they thought they could. He did win but only after an exhausting trial that took years.
Really sucks when credit is not given where due.
In 1990, they put out Stacker, which did transparent disk compression, effectively giving people twice as much disk space. It was a huge hit, so Microsoft called them up about an acquisition, entered discussion, and as part of the due dilligence process, even looked at the source code.
In 1993, Microsoft released their own version of Stacker as part of the OS. No thank you, no money for Stac, just a giant middle finger. Stac sued and eventually won some money, but it was never the same.
Everybody keeps telling me that Microsoft is different these days. About how they love open source now. And it's true that after decades of erosion of their primary monopolies, they can't get away with being as lazy and awful as they were in, say, the early IE era. But this suggests to me that deep down they haven't really changed.
I think I had a 200MB hard drive at the time.