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Seems like the takeover of free software continues apace, in the land of Redmond, where the Blue Screens lie.
From ZDNet,
The Windows Package Manager service and the winget.exe command-line tool are now available in public preview for everyone to test. Winget comes with the preview version of Windows App Installer for sideloading apps on Windows 10.
While Windows 10 users can install apps from the Microsoft Store, the Windows Package Manager will help developers install tools that aren't necessarily available in the store, such as Win32 software products that haven't been converted to Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps in the store.
win-get? As the Operative said in "Serenity", "Bastards aren't even changing course!" Microsoft not even changing the name of the utility. At least with Stacker, they changed the name to DoubleSpace.
The tool can help users get their apps by typing 'winget install' followed by the program name into the command line or create a script that automatically installs all necessary tools.
The package manager is available to users in Microsoft's Windows Insider testing program after installing Microsoft's App Installer program.
Microsoft has aimed to create a repository of trusted applications, from which the package manager can install apps that have been vetted with its SmartScreen technology and cryptographically verified.
While the package manager does provide an alternative to the Microsoft Store, formerly the Windows Store, Microsoft says it changes nothing for the store.
What is this "store" they speak of?
The key difference between the Microsoft Store and Windows Package Manager is that the store is all about commerce while the package manager is not.
"The Windows Package Manager is a command-line interface, no marketing, no images, no commerce. Although we do plan on making those apps installable too," said Demitrius Nelon, a senior program manager at Microsoft.
Seems that they copied that from free software, specifically Debian, as well. "bash:~& sudo win-get remove --purge Windows --extreme-prejudice" Adm. Akbar says: "It's a trap!"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @05:15PM (6 children)
A friend of mine worked for Stac, at the time.
MS did copy Stacker, they were sued, and lost.
MS then counter-sued Stac. MS's claim was that Stacker would not have been possible to have been created without reverse engineering MS software to see how to create a terminate and stay resident application, as MS had never documented this, and used this functionality to exclusively give their own products an edge in functionality. MS won this lawsuit.
Meanwhile MS was telling anti-trust investigators that they had no hidden apis, and that any 3rd party had access to the same interfaces and information as MS teams developing software for DOS had.
MS wasn't happy with the amount awarded from Stac (1/7 what Stac won from MS for MS's outright theft) for using undocumented DOS features. They weren't even satisfied that they got away with telling completely opposite narratives to the court when they sued Stac, and to anti-trust investigators. So, they purchased Stac, fired all the employees, and shut down the business-- out of spite.
MS, a truly evil company run by truly evil men.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @09:33PM
Really? You've got a friend? What's that like?
(Score: 2) by turgid on Monday May 25 2020, @09:47PM (1 child)
Were TSRs really secret? Back in the day several computer magazines had series of articles on how they worked and how to write one. When I was 16 I worked on a TSR in my summer holidays. There was a library you could get called Tesseract as well to help you write one.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 25 2020, @10:28PM
Different AC, but the counter-suit wasn't over TSR itself, but how they got the status. Most programs have to wait until CONFIG.SYS is loaded to become TSR, however Microsoft and people who copied them instead loaded using the preload header directive to be started by MSDOS.SYS automatically.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Monday May 25 2020, @11:32PM (1 child)
Terminate and stay resident was a microsoft invention? Sounds like utter BS to me. I'd have to research, but I'm really sure that I saw and used TSR before I ever heard of Microsoft.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 26 2020, @01:30AM
As I mentioned in a different post [soylentnews.org] it wasn't the TSR that was the issue, it was how the particular method used to load earlier.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Tuesday May 26 2020, @12:59PM
Right. I couldn't find a detailed reference off hand, but what I recall reading was that Microsoft evaluated Stacker and saw its code. When they decided to not go with Stacker, they re-implemented some of the, apparently patented, bits they saw in to their enhanced customized DoubleDisk.
Then hard drives started getting bigger and made it all irrelevant :P