Microsoft threatens its (MVP!)Most Valuable Professional

[praka123]

Who said you could improve our software?

By Will Watts

Published Tuesday 5th June 2007 10:25 GMT

What's the best way to attract a pile of threatening lawyers' letters from Microsoft? Sell pirate copies of Windows? Write a DRM-busting program?

Londoner Jamie Cansdale has just discovered a new approach. He had the temerity to make Redmond's software better.
As a hobby, Cansdale developed an add-on for Microsoft Visual Studio. TestDriven.NET allows unit test suites to be run directly from within the Microsoft IDE. Cansdale gave away this gadget on his website, and initially received the praises of Microsoft.

In fact, Microsoft was so pleased with him, it gave him a Most Valuable Professionals (MVP) award, which it says it gives to "exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who voluntarily share their high quality, real world expertise with others".

However, his cherished status did not last. In December 2005, he started getting emails from a Microsoft executive called Jason Weber. The problem was that TestDriven.NET supported the Express edition of Visual Studio. Express is the cut-down version that anyone can download for free from the Microsoft website. It is limited in various ways, and is intended only for hobbyists and students. Everyone else is supposed to shell out for the paid-for versions.

In fact, as a .NET hobbyist himself, Cansdale says he used Express to develop TestDriven.NET. Ironically, he only got access to a fancier version of Visual Studio as part of his MVP goody-bag.
But MS doesn't want you supporting Visual Studio Express with your add-ons.

Weber wrote to Cansdale that he had violated Express licence agreements: that he was accessing APIs not available to those who only had the Express version of Visual Studio, or that he had reverse engineered APIs - also forbidden.

Cansdale said from the off - and has stuck by this - that he only used APIs in the public domain, published on Microsoft's MSDN website for all to see. He invited Weber to be specific about the API/licence term that was violated.

Weber blanked him, and then began an exchange of increasingly acrimonious correspondence, which can be read on Cansdale's website here and here.

In the long sequence of emails that followed, Weber treated Cansdale with immense condescension:
"Craig Symonds is a busy Microsoft executive. We're fortunate that we could get 30 minutes with him for a conference call"; consistently evasive when asked to identify the specific legal problem, meanwhile trying to bully Cansdale to withdraw Visual Studio Express support and remove his "hack".

Cansdale took legal advice, and bravely dug in his heels.
At one point, in a splendid example of the right hand being unaware of who is getting the left hand's index finger, Cansdale got a letter presaging another MVP award only to have it hastily withdrawn the next day (find this incident the bottom of the second page of emails.)
Finally, Microsoft lost patience, and in the last few days has hit Cansdale with a flurry of lawyers' letters, also available on his website [see here and here]. Cansdale now has until 4pm Wednesday 6 June to disable the Visual Studio Express features of his product.

We await the deadline with bated breath.
Meanwhile, a quiet word in the ear of any earnest young programmer who is considering downloading a copy of Visual Studio Express and slaving deep into the night, striving hard in the Microsofty ways, in the hope one day of earning the glorious rank of MVP.

source:
*www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/05/microsoft_mvp_threats/

MVP's here? M$ can bite!!!

 

[ravi_9793]

hey..I am nt getting exactly.Instead of just copy and paste..plz post the news in brief in ur own words plz.

 

[kalpik]

Lol!

 

[led_shankar]

hahaha

 

[BBThumbHealer]

hey..I am nt getting exactly.Instead of just copy and paste..plz post the news in brief in ur own words plz.

me too not getting...plz explain in brief !

 

[eddie]

Poor guy He must've felt the frustration that millions of Linux users feel. Typical Microsoft conversation....

Microsoft: You are infringing our license terms.
Respondent: Really? Where? Please tell me. I will remove it
Microsoft: You are infringing our license terms. We will sue you!
Respondent: Yeah I hear ya but pleeeeaaaseeee tell me where??? Which part of the code?
Microsoft: We told you so. Don't you believe us? You are infringing our license terms.
Respondent: F You!

 

[mediator]

Poor guy He must've felt the frustration that millions of Linux users feel. Typical Microsoft conversation....

Microsoft: You are infringing our license terms.
Respondent: Really? Where? Please tell me. I will remove it
Microsoft: You are infringing our license terms. We will sue you!
Respondent: Yeah I hear ya but pleeeeaaaseeee tell me where??? Which part of the code?
Microsoft: We told you so. Don't you believe us? You are infringing our license terms.
Respondent: F You!

Respondent: MS is a leader in spreading FUD.
MS Fanboy : Mind ur words 'boy'! U r 'abusing' the most popular company? How dare u?
Respondent : MS can never be loyal to anyone. They made their MVP's life a living hell.
MS Fanboy : Be 'sensible'. 'only OSC community' can talk like this!!
Respondent : I only did some programming on 'windows'.
MS Fanboy : U gotta use 'common sense' when using windows!!

So u see 'common sense' is a very important factor u got to embed into ur computing and whenever, 'for watever' u r using MS-windows and MS products that can save u mentally and 'financially'. I pity the 'average joes'!!

 

[rakeshishere]

But MS doesn't want you supporting Visual Studio Express with your add-ons.

Hhehehhehe.. ..LOL @ the NEWS

B/w Plz Format the First Post of this Thread..It looks weird and doesnt serve the purpose

 

[Kiran.dks]

^^Yeah. The post is full of debris. Please format the post well, clean up the junk!

 

[i_am_crack]

awesome....I mean the digit respondents....more than the news...espically eddie and mediator

eBro

 

[praka123]

I think not many will like this news!
news in brief:
A guy who was awarded and patronized by M$ MVP tries to build some free plugins for VS Express edtn(freely available?).Now after the plugins are released by him,M$ first praised him,then came hunting him for violating M$ EULA for Visual Studio Express License.Now the guy is in trouble.yes same threatening thingy is there follows the poor guy too
is it OK for slow coaches?.

 

[rakeshishere]

I think not many will like this news!
news in brief:
A guy who was awarded and patronized by M$ MVP tries to build some free plugins for VS Express edtn(freely available?).Now after the plugins are released by him,M$ first praised him,then came hunting him for violating M$ EULA for Visual Studio Express License.Now the guy is in trouble.yes same threatening thingy is there follows the poor guy too
is it OK for slow coaches?.

All this Stuff is well understood After You Just Formatted your post very well..Initially ..I guess It must have been a " Fast Copy-Paste "

 

[sandeepk]

Ha ha ha...
This is a typical MS response...
Nobody know what MS wants us do and what not to do!!

 

[anandk]

Interesting news. Wonder what really hapnd behind the curtains

 

[aryayush]

Meanwhile, a quiet word in the ear of any earnest young programmer who is considering downloading a copy of Visual Studio Express and slaving deep into the night, striving hard in the Microsofty ways, in the hope one day of earning the glorious rank of MVP.

This is no laughing matter, IMHO. The person was doing something for the benefit of aspiring Windows developers and all Microsoft could do was what it usually does. I generally just loathe Windows but I did have some respect for Microsoft. However, such incidents do not help their case. Shame on them!

Poor guy He must've felt the frustration that millions of Linux users feel. Typical Microsoft conversation....

Microsoft: You are infringing our license terms.
Respondent: Really? Where? Please tell me. I will remove it
Microsoft: You are infringing our license terms. We will sue you!
Respondent: Yeah I hear ya but pleeeeaaaseeee tell me where??? Which part of the code?
Microsoft: We told you so. Don't you believe us? You are infringing our license terms.
Respondent: F You!

Brilliant post. If you came up with that yourself (and I believe you did), it is seriously awesome stuff. Funny and accurate.

 

[anandk]

ms side of the story

...he developed extension for a product where EULA prohibits extensions...

"we’ve been asking him in multiple emails and conference calls to stop extending (just Express) since before Visual Studio 2005 even shipped, (ie they were talking for 2 years). We even got the General Manager of Visual Studio to personally talk to him on the phone to plead with him to remove Express extensibility. Closely following that, Jamie took the violations to heart and removed Visual Studio Express extensibility for several months. Only recently did he decide to add Express support back to TestDriven.NET and only after another round of conversations and close to two years of trying to avoid escalating this situation, we felt compelled to deliver our message in a different form."

*blogs.msdn.com/danielfe/

 

[lalam]

Hmmm i don't know what to say is it a monkey or is it a donkey or something else?

 

[sivarap]

Well...MS is not a Open source....So they are allowed to restrict whatever they want in their EULA. But one thing beats me....Is it explicitly written in their EULA that no one can extend their Express module (or whatever)....

If it is not already written then Jamie is right....if not jaemie is wrong.

Also note that Jamie is not intending to give his product for free....He is also tryin to make money out of it.....

Its like selling a toothpaste free sample ....

 

[Choto Cheeta]

Read what Microsoft Has to say on it....

*blogs.msdn.com/danielfe/

there is always 2 side of a story

 

[eddie]

...he developed extension for a product where EULA prohibits extensions...

Would you please be kind enough to link us to the EULA of Visual Studio Express edition while quoting the stanza that prohibits extensions?