Top all-time · #7579
Rob Mensching
Personal blog · robmensching.com/blog/postsprogrammingcareersystems
Rob Mensching's personal blog at robmensching.com covers programming, career and systems. Since 2018, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 10 times, most often “Xz: A microcosm of the interactions in open source projects”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-07-30, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Rob Mensching's blog as a Windows and Microsoft history source, including his 2004 Windows Installer post. Commenters cite it as an example rather than judging its writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
FireGiant CEO and WiX Toolset benevolent dictator
Most-linked posts?
- Xz: A microcosm of the interactions in open source projects3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-03-30
- How the .NET Foundation kerfuffle became a brouhaha2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-10-08
What Hacker News says?
I made a note on similar happening somewhere... if somebody is interested 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28779342 | I'm sorry 2. https://github.com/dotnet-foundation/Home/discussions/39 | I'm sorry 3. https://www.google.com/search?q=.NET+github+enterprise+hacke... 4. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28847178 | Use of GitHub Enterprise 5. https://github.com/dotnet-foundation/Home/discussions/59 | Use of…
Comment linking /blog/posts/2021/10/6/how-the-.net-foundation-kerfuffle-became-a-brouhaha/
on “Can we trust Microsoft with open source?”Submitted Xz: A microcosm of the interactions in open source projects as a story · 526 points
HN discussionAlso don't forget Rob Mensching[0] in 2004. [0]: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2004/4/5/windows-installe...
Comment linking /blog/posts/2004/4/5/windows-installer-xml-wix-toolset-has-released-as-open-source-on-sourceforge.net/
on “Richard Stallman spoke at Microsoft Research this week”Submitted How the .NET Foundation kerfuffle became a brouhaha as a story · 435 points
HN discussionThis has been fixed and should be live on the site now. If there are any other issues, please feel free to reach out to me via the information at the bottom of this post: https://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2025/02/26/introducing-t... (I'll also try to keep up with this thread on Hacker News).
Comment linking /blog/posts/2025/02/26/introducing-the-open-source-maintenance-fee/
on “Open Source Maintenance Fee”Submitted Twenty years maintaining the WiX Toolset as a story · 67 points
HN discussionAgreed re: some of the Windows "strangeness". I think there was some amount of needlessly "Enterprise" architecting going on at MSFT back in the day. There were also very practical solutions incorporated to accommodate the constraints of the hardware of the time that come off looking like needless complexity today, too. (There's also, arguably, some laziness in the old binary file formats that were nothing more than…
Comment linking /blog/posts/2003/11/25/inside-the-msi-file-format/
on “Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware”Submitted About Xz: "A Microcosm of the interactions in Open Source projects" as a story · 11 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Microcosm of the interactions in Open Source projects as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Inside the MSI file format (2003) as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
