Last week, AppGet creator Keivan Beigi penned a blog post calling out Microsoft, essentially saying that the Windows Package Manager, also known as winget, pretty much ripped him off. According to him, Microsoft contacted him, brought him in for a full day interviews as an acqui-hire, and then there was radio silence for six months. Obviously, during this day of interviews, his plans for AppGet, including what works and doesn't work about it, were discussed.
Microsoft responded over the weekend, now giving Beigi credit for a number of Windows Package Manager features, such as no scripts during install, the rich manifest definition within GitHub, support for all types of Windows app installers, and seamless updates for apps. It wasn't specifically an apology, rather an admission that Microsoft "failed to live up to this with Keivan and AppGet", this being the open source community and the goal of building out in the open.
Andrew Clinick, who wrote the response, also acknowledged that he did meet with Beigi last summer, and did listen to his insights on what a Windows package manager should look like. And clearly, the final product was inspired by that conversation.
AppGet is an open source project, so if Microsoft forked it or copied some code, it was within its rights to do so. Of course, while not legally required to do so, giving credit to AppGet and Beigi is the right thing to do, so the company is trying to make that right.
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