From: mike 

On Thu, 07 Jun 2007 07:31:59 -0400, Mike N.  wrote:

>On Thu, 07 Jun 2007 19:07:13 +1000, John Beckett
> wrote:
>
>>I just can't see that Jamie has picked any great moral high ground on
>>which to fight. Certainly I would be pissed off if Jamie broke the
>>restrictions I placed on a free program that I had written, where I had
>>attached a EULA prohibiting add-ins. If I could afford the legals, I would
>>nail him.
>
>   Thanks - the MS view makes more sense now.  It's not like the majority
>of Express users are clamoring for a Test Driven Development environment -
>only the serious developers are doing this anyway.


Here's another article...
http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/06/06/microsoft_mvp_threats/

===
Microsoft has adopted a bullish stance in the Most Valuable Professional
saga, in which it's making an MVP feel most unvalued. The software giant is
threatening Jamie Cansdale for making his product TestDriven.NET work with
the free-as-in-beer version of Visual Studio.

Dan Fernandez, Lead Product Manager for Visual Studio Express, has blogged
about the incident.

And although he appears to have mastered the trick of typing with a small
onion in his eye, he's not giving away an inch.

Adopting the tone of a kindly 19th century schoolmaster who is hurt more by
having to render the beating than the beatee himself, Fernandez regrets the
willful actions of 'Jamie', and his violation of the "ethos" of
the Express product line.

"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," he writes.

Readers of our earlier story will recall that Microsoftees find any show of
resistance after this gargantuan concession incredible.

Fernandez also explains why Microsoft doesn't like people allowing
extensions in Express editions. Apparently, it's because they make the
products too complex for beginners.

Why, that's obviously the reason, now that we have had it explained to us.

Reg readers have also been opining on this David/Goliath confrontation.
Jonathan Walls pitches in on behalf of Microsoft:

>>>
I'm not sure I understand this one. You say the TestDriven tool is a hobby,
yet there are two different editions available at cost on the the website.
Clearly this is a commercial product.

Is there a reason you are deliberately misrepresenting the facts of the
matter? In general, a principled stand is more impressive when a basic
level of honesty is involved.

On a technical level, the APIs covered on the MSDN site will also include
functionality intended only for the non-Express editions. It seems entirely
possible that publically available APIs could be used to breach conditions
of the Express license. A rather disingenuous point he makes, I feel.

Reading the thread, it is clear Jamie was happy to resist on a strict legal
basis during non-legal discussions, and now it has gone legal he is using
PR activities rather than legal ones. Might I suggest that if he doesn't
like the commercial world, he invest his efforts in the open source
movement? Or perhaps his motivations are not quite so principled?

I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that there are gaps in the precise
wording of the express license, and code from the full Visual Studio
products not taken out of the Express version, that make it possible to
circumvent the clear intention that the free product for hobbyists is not
extensible. A world where the responsibility is on M$ to force their coders
to spend time destroying their own code, and to spend even more money on
lawyers to construct the perfect airtight license, sounds like a hostile
environment for technologists. It makes sense, however, once you find that
Jamie wants such an environment because he wants to make money out of it.
>>>



Others are more sympathetic to Jamie Cansdale. Thom Lanigan sees a complex
and sinister plot:

>>>
Does anyone else see the logic in Microsoft's demeanour? It's the perfect
ploy to ensure that programmers bend to their will. MS is trying to
intimidate its most ardent supporters to gain control of applications to
which it does not own the copyright. I'm sure some one of Microsoft's
Lawyers got together with some manager in MS and said "Hmmm... This
software would look good as a module in our app, but we can't use it
without paying this guy for the rights. Lets intimidate him into giving it
up, but not until we make him feel special first...

After all, we can't have a monopoly if we don't have control of all the
cool toys, and if MS can't have all the cool toys to themselves, maybe
someone will go about sharing it with others. That's not the impression MS
wants to give, that sharing is an acceptable practise . . . cos that would
mean it condones a little competition from the Free Software crowds too.

The best thing Cansdale can do is to fight tooth and nail with MS and GPL
his creation if he wants to share it with others.
>>>


And Norm is moved by the incident to propose a strange biological theory:

>>>
Microsoft is a strange and very scary place. They will kill and eat their
own young just to ensure future generations. (not sure how that works, but
they do it all the time. :-( )
>>>


Stranger and scarier than we knew. R
===


I do like the part where Dan Fernandez, Lead Product Manager for Visual
Studio Express talks about the violations of the "ethos" of the
product line.  Give me a break, like Microsoft has never ripped off
anyone's IP.
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005010107100653  Oh,
it's different when Microsoft is the one violating the ethos, eh?

Even funnier is that rationalization that the Express product is for
beginners, and the plug-in in question will make the product more
complicated.  Well, if it is too complicated for you, don't use the
plug-in.  Geesh.


  /m

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