Microsoft Slaps Its Most Valuable Professional
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jun 05, 2007 10:47 PM
from the schizophrenic-is-one-word-for-it dept.
from the schizophrenic-is-one-word-for-it dept.
Violent Offender writes with a touching story in The Register about Microsoft's awarding of its Most Valuable Professional credential to a British hobbyist, Jamie Cansdale, then turning around and threatening him with a lawsuit for the very software that won him the award. The article links to the amazing correspondence from Microsoft on Cansdale's site.
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Microsoft Slaps Its Most Valuable Professional
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DUPE (Score:5, Informative)
(http://127.0.0.1/)
Re:DUPE (Score:5, Informative)
Re:DUPE (Score:5, Funny)
(http://zulupad.gersic.com/)
Re:DUPE (Score:5, Insightful)
This time however, that is monopolized by discussions about grammar and the editors lack thereof.
So while this story has been posted twice, there has been no meaningful discussion of an interesting topic. So - do I blame the editors for grammar/dupe problems, or the community for failing to look past some minor annoyances and actually talk about what is going on here?
Re:DUPE (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.underachievement.org/ | Last Journal: Sunday January 21 2007, @10:58PM)
I think Tags were revamped a while ago, and as a result the fun tags don't show up anymore.
Personally, I don't bother with them any longer. When you could tag something "fud", "yes", "no", "itsatrap", "omgponies", "09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0", etc it was a fun way to comment on a story (even if it is the epitome of groupthink). I thought the tags gave Slashdot users another interesting way to communicate, and to express the general sentiment of a story.
Sorry Taco, but Tags are boring and useless now. Bring back the old ones or do away with these.
Re:DUPE (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Thursday May 24, @01:08AM)
Microsoft-free Fridays (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:DUPE (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://trog.qgl.org)
Rather than build on that they decided to tweak the system (for understandable reasons) so it started working more as it was originally intended - as a way to tag/classify stories at a high level.
I thought it was always interesting/entertaining - it basically summarised the comments (which is why I read slashdot in the first place) in a way that made it easy to see what the general community feel for a story was. That's more useful to me than keywords in the story, personally.
Re:DUPE (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.man.ac.uk/~zzcgudf/)
my only complaint (Score:4, Interesting)
Cheers.
Re:my only complaint (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www-cdf.fnal.gov/ | Last Journal: Wednesday June 13, @11:39AM)
It could even get more sophisticated than that. You could say that you only want to see the tag "haha" if more than 30% of the users who tagged the story included "haha", or something like that.
Then, of course, it should be set up so that users could also filter stories based on tags (or any number of other things). Thus, you could filter out all stories tagged "microsoft", if you so desired, or all stories tagged "slashvertisement". Or perhaps most useful, filter out all stories tagged "dupe"...
Re:DUPE (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://bware.iware.co.uk/)
It is hardly a news flash that Slashdot does dupe stories, surly the editors are not so far up the Nile that they don't realise this. Taging dupes would seem to be a good way of dealing with this.
Re:DUPE (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Saturday September 22, @12:45PM)
Since an awful lot of slashdot users are too lazy to actually read the full article they would tag something as dupe just because it was on the same topic that was previously mentioned, even though the article that was linked to would often add something unique that had previously been unknown in the slashdot debate.
I this case the previous article was regarding the guys blog and this was regarding the registers coverage of the same article. Since I have not read this guys blog in its entirety I am unable to say whether the register article adds anything new.
I was however that the register article was posted here as it gave me a way of finding out the synopsis of the story without having trawl through what would have been a one sided account. People being threatened with legal action are rarely impartial about the people trying to drag them through the courts.
I think a better solution than removing the dupe tage though would have been to prevent people who do not click on any links contained in the text from posting a comment or any feedback. Afterall, what can you possible add to the discussion if you are too lazy to RTFA.
I know there are exceptions to this such as if you hover over the link and see if it is the same link you have previously read but how many people apart from me do this?
But Stay Tuned! (Score:5, Informative)
(http://lists.clickers.org/linuxsig/index.html | Last Journal: Friday November 09, @11:00PM)
Tomorrow is special. It's the deadline M$ gave him to remove Express support.
Thanks for pointing to the old article. The Dan Fernande's letter [msdn.com] is priceless entertainment parodied in the following Power Point Slide:
Please Don't Help Express Users
by Dan Fernandez
Why do they try? There's no way for them to win this.
Let's see what happens next! Will they stop issuing Express, remotely disable it and then sue Jamie? Do they leave him alone and let it keep working with ... the appropriate apology? Ha!
Re:But Stay Tuned! (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Saturday September 22, @12:45PM)
Where? In the parent post you replied to or in the register article on this topic that is linked in the synopsis above.
Personally I think it was a good idea to get a free version for those that wanted to try their hands at programming
This might happen, but it is a gamble on microsofts part. They know that if the remove express from the marketplace then alot of students studying programming will not be able to afford the full version. This gives them a limited number of choices:
1) Stop working from home.
For many this is simply not an option. Even if it was it doesnt benefit anyone in the long term as they will undoubtably suffer in the long term as they will not be as capable programmers as they could have been had they coded into the night for years on end.
2) Pirate the full version.
This has the result of getting people used to using knock off software. Since this is a mindset the MS are trying avoid people getting into as if they have to use pirated software for the duration of the degree they may continue when they start work instead of asking their boss to buy them a license for their home PC if they need to work from home alot.
3) Use a different IDE or platform.
This is worst case scenario for MS. For starters, it means that alot of the professionals of tomorrow are able to use non-MS products reducing vendor lock in to
Of the three options listed above, option 1 is out of the question for a great many students (The kind like me who slept during lectures). That leaves option 2 or 3. Option 2 is a far better choice from microsofts point of view and one the used to ignore people doing (maybe even encourage), now however they are certainly trying to change peoples mindset such that pirated software is bad from a very young age.
Re:But Stay Tuned! (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Thursday January 06 2005, @02:26PM)
He went on to create an add-on that works against a provided (short) list of system libraries which adds functionality to Visual Studio, including the Express version.
MS claims he violated the EULA, but he doesn't see it, his lawyer doesn't see it, and I don't see it either (IANAL). Specifically what part of the license do you think he violated? I'm doing my best to not hate MS right now, but it's pretty clear that they are the assholes here.
Ross
MS is on a roll... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.evolt.org/)
What are the odds?
Re:MS is on a roll... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.cornetdesign.com/)
Re:MS is on a roll... (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Saturday October 07 2006, @07:46PM)
Re:MS is on a roll... (Score:5, Funny)
You must be new here.
No wait, you have a 5-digit UID. Wha?
Re:MS is on a roll... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Re:MS is on a roll... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.geocities.com/tablizer | Last Journal: Saturday March 15 2003, @01:22PM)
Ballmer said it best... (Score:5, Insightful)
Developers, developers... lawsuit.
Mod me flamebait all you like (Score:5, Interesting)
But you know it's true. Read the article. The guy got an MVP and a cease and desist for the same freaking program.
Is making a joke that runs parallel to the truth flamebait? If so, what does that say about that truth?
Re:Mod me flamebait all you like (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Mod me flamebait all you like (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.creimer.ws/ | Last Journal: Friday January 26 2007, @12:40PM)
Re:Ballmer said it best... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Thursday August 16, @07:42PM)
Re:Ballmer said it best... (Score:4, Funny)
(http://babelfish.alt...%2F%2Fslashdot.jp%2F)
Not that I'm suggesting that Steve Ballmer is literally trying to get developers to sleep with him, obviously. At least, not that I'm aware of...
Just read up on all of it a few hours ago... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.outshine.com/)
...apparently Jamie has until 4 PM tomorrow (the 6th) to respond to the lawyers or remove the offending application.
If you read through ALL the correspondence (a boring, lengthy exercise), you'll find out a few interesting facts:
The end result is that Jamie wants to fight it, but if he does, he's gonna lose in court. However, he is very very right in one aspect -- Microsoft deserves a black eye over this, and I don't blame Jamie for wanting to punch them in the face. I don't think Microsoft/Weber was particularly evil, but they were slightly rude and rather stupid. They would not answer Jamie's requests, over and over again. If they had just answered him plainly and clearly, this would have been solved a year ago.
Re:Just read up on all of it a few hours ago... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://whineymacfanboy.googlepages.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday April 12 2007, @09:28AM)
I'm sorry - that's not clear to me at all.
I'm not particularly up there with UK contract law however. Perhaps you can explain to me exactly how he violated Microsoft's contract by using the published APIs?
Re:Just read up on all of it a few hours ago... (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://www.blue.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday July 15 2003, @08:35PM)
Personally if I was him I would just withdraw my project all totally, there is nothing to gain from being sued by Microsoft aside from some personal ego
Re:Just read up on all of it a few hours ago... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.realitywerks.com/)
For those not clear on the situation, the short of it is this. TestDriven.NET is an add-in for Visual Studio. Visual Studio Express has a "technical limitation" that ostensibly prevents the loading of add-ins (removal of the Add-In Manager, I believe). The EULA states that:
"...you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways... You may not work around any technical limitations in the software."
Constructing an add-in that can be loaded by Express is presumably a violation of the EULA for Express, because you're working around the technical limitation (weak though it may be) in the software that blocks the loading of add-ins. Technically speaking, anyone who uses it with Express is also violating the EULA. The best argument, IMO (and IANAL), is going to be that disabling the Add-In Manager isn't really a technical limitation against the loading of add-ins, since they can be loaded programmatically. It's a technical limitation against end-users manually loading add-ins.
Re:Just read up on all of it a few hours ago... (Score:5, Informative)
http://blogs.msdn.com/danielfe/archive/2007/06/01
Re:Just read up on all of it a few hours ago... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.terminal.dk/)
Apart from this, the legal status of EULAs is doubtsome in most of Europe. Some say the EULA is a contract. I ask, where is the signature ? Can I negotiate the contract with my local reseller ? The EULA is probably not valid in many countries. As local lawyers says hyere, as long as it is in english, and not our native language, then it for sure is not legal for individuals. Only companies are supposed to be bound by foreign language contracts (which an EULA might not be considered as).
Re:Missunderstanding ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Missunderstanding ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, but you become "a legal owner of a copy of software" only if you agree to the license. Any software you get close to in the US and EU is implicitly (i.e. by default) protected by copyright. You must first acquire rights to use the copyrighted work. To do so, you must agree to the license. That's why GPL and other licenses indeed do work, regardless of any EULA limits that law may or may not impose.
Reverse engineering (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just read up on all of it a few hours ago... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.outshine.com/)
Yes and no. I can explain what I read, and why I believe that it will hold up in court. But I don't think you're asking for that. I think you feel that using public APIs should not be prevented or outlawed, and so you object to the entire concept. If I'm wrong about that, you can skip this paragraph and go to the ntext one. But if I'm right, all I can say is that's not an argument I can have with you, as I find it to be a boring one. MS has a contract, they've cited the passage he violates, and they'll sing it out loud in court. Whether we like that or not, it means MS will win in my book. So I don't really care to have a discussion about how ethical MS is, or whether they should be able to restrict a public API. The fact is, they do it, and seem to have a leg to stand on here. But by all means, have that discussion with other Slashdot readers. I'm sure it's one that many would like to have.
So with that disclaimer in place, here is what I read [asp.net]. Near the bottom of the first page of that scan, you'll see that they cite the part of the contract that has been violated. In particular, the contract states that you cannot circumvent the limitations they've put on the low-end product. One of the limitations is no plugins. That's explained elsewhere, but here in the letter from the lawyers we at least see now that they have a clause prohibiting end-runs around the crippled features of the low-end product. This is what Jamie asked for time and time again. No one would cite any clause that he violated. Finally, at last, someone did. Whatever I think about the merits of Microsoft's case, I will continue to think that they're jerks for taking a year to quote the relevant part of the contract.
Elsewhere, in another letter, they explain that they have the legal prohibition in the contract to cover cases exactly like this -- cases where they tried to block it technically, but someone found a loophole. So they use the contract as a way to say, "even if we screw up and left a way to do it technically, you still can't do it contractually." We may or may not think they should be allowed to get away with that, but again, that's where I get bored and drop out of the conversation.
Re:Just read up on all of it a few hours ago... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Saturday November 03, @04:58AM)
It's also my understanding that in Europe, APIs cannot be protected by copyright. There have been cases in Europe of one company suing another over API infringement, but the only ones I can think of are ones where the plaintiff lost.
Third, under British common law, the "reasonable man" defense is valid and does get used.
Having said that, inviting a lawsuit is stupid in the extreme. Particularly when your opponent has vastly more money than you and vastly more political clout than you. (Consider how many in the legal profession use Microsoft products. Now consider the impact of the proverbial "accident". Alternatively, consider the potential for performance bonuses to lawyers who choose the "right" side.) Even if it gets to the House of Lords - a possibility if there's serious money involved - you're dealing from a pack that is entirely comprised of wildcards. Law Lords have far greater independence than the US Supreme Court but also far less legal experience and have a range in IQs that map nicely onto a signed byte. It may even go on to the European Court of Human Rights, which is a whole other random number generator. Just because the main EU courts hate Microsoft's guts doesn't mean the ECHR will. They might do the reverse, precisely because of all the other rulings. You just can't tell.
So, you've a series of three, maybe four, totally random systems making legal decisions based on a type of contract whose existence is uncertain and whose non-existence may in fact create exactly the same offense by a different route, and where the lawyers and judges (and any potential jury) are almost guaranteed to be sufficiently ignorant of nomenclature that the issues will be utterly incomprehensible to any of them.
Legal aid is great for cutting court costs, but it doesn't supply the defendant with magic pixie dust or psychic reprogramming skills.
I'd argue that APIs should be enshrined in International Law as exempt from all IP regulations. An API is not a product - protect the product all you like, but the API is merely how two distinct products communicate and is not intrinsic to either one of them. Otherwise identical products can have any number of interfaces. Happens all the time.
However, and this is the important bit, my argument isn't worth an electron's nosebleed. What those random courts decide is the only thing that matters and those random courts are most likely to be persuaded by the better lawyers - which Microsoft will probably have/buy/steal/pwn. What's more, what those courts decide will determine (to a great extent) what all future courts in the UK will decide. Screwing this up doesn't affect one person, it affects the full sixty million. Backing off is cheap for one person, but losing will cost far too much for far too many. Pick your battles.
Re:Just read up on all of it a few hours ago... (Score:5, Interesting)
As the other replies state, the clause (in the Express EULA) is: 'may not work around technical limitations of the software'. Microsoft are assuming:
Alternatively, perhaps Microsoft think his original alleged violation of the license (during development) somehow disqualified him from distributing a VS.NET plugin - this would probably require proving the plugin is a derived work as Microsoft would have no authority over its distribution otherwise. I can't see them doing this as I would think it would have serious repercussions for their other customers.
Personally, I think this clause is overly broad and Microsoft's action on it is quite worrying. If they win here, basically all they need to do is claim that something you've written is 'working around a technical limitation' and they can control your product distribution. Let's not forget that the MSTest functionality in the pricey VS 2005 Team Edition is effectively in competition with Jamie's TestDriven.NET.
Re:They're idiots... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the same company who released the Zune, which doesn't play playsfornotsure. Media player 11 which doesn't support Zune. IE7 which fixed few real IE bugs but instead added chrome like tabs and phishing filters. Vista which is un-compelling enough to ensure most people will be on XP until developers stop writing software for it. Need I go on? Microsoft isn't evil like many think. They just suck. Totally clueless.
Re:Just read up on all of it a few hours ago... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, this is evil. You don't treat people this way who are helping your business.
How does it compare to, say, people hacking OSX around to make it work on regular PCs ?
Re:Just read up on all of it a few hours ago... (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.outshine.com/)
Um, OK. I guess I defer to you, as I'm not an MS developer. But Jamie maintains that he only used methods documented by Microsoft itself. So if he was hacking, it was MS-approved and MS-documented hacks that were used. I would tend to think that means it's not hacking, but is instead programming as proscribed by the company.
OK, again, I guess I have to defer to you. You're stating your opinion, and you're free to have it. However, I can't share your opinion. I've read it all, and I feel that Weber was rude almost from the start. In addition, if Microsoft is frustrated that they asked nicely and didn't get the results they wanted, I feel they need to blame themselves. The only reason that I can see that it didn't work out as Microsoft wanted is because they wouldn't answer Jamie's questions. He wasn't going to cripple his product without some justification for it, and yet over and over again Microsoft ignored that request or answered in generalities. You can blame Jamie, if you want. But I'm going to say that Microsoft was handling members of the developer community very poorly there.Uh, yeah, a year after he asked! What was it, 5 days ago that they finally told him? That seems a bit tardy, so I'd not give Microsoft a break on that count.
It's the M$ way, or the highway (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.slashdot.org/)
So even if he isn't breaking any policies, maybe he should play nice?
Personally I have a strong feeling that compilers in general should be free. I don't mean to get all Mac-Fanboi here (I come from a Linux background), but that's one thing Apple does very nicely. XCode is a very nice development suite that is entirely free (beer, of course).
The reasons for my belief? Well, when I was growing up I didn't have money to buy expensive (or any, for that matter) compilers. I had no choice but to steal a copy of BC++ 3.1 (and TP 6.0). It's true that the DJGPP compiler did exist, but using it and getting a decent editor at that age was difficult (and I had no interweb connection then). I'd probably still not know how to program if I hadn't stolen the compilers.
Which is to say, I think it's important for the ecosystem to have free compilers. It's good that M$ finally agrees with this. It's stupid that they want to put stupid restrictions on it. But given that, I guess it's their product, and they get to decide. And nowadays it's not like there aren't other systems/compilers out there. If M$ wants to ruin their ecosystem, then let them.
internets (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sent this off a few days ago... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://pcbookreview.com/)
I'm not surprised, it was a bit juvenile and inflamatory.
Exactly why I love linux (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.codepunk.com/)
programming on a windows box is like programming with one hand tied behind your back. Nothing but artificial barriers to getting things done. I sure don't miss the days when I had to program on windows.
No (Score:4, Funny)
the APIs (Score:3, Informative)
simple solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Simple solution: abandon the product. Drop support not just for the Expression Edition, but for all editions of Visual Studio. Develop something equivalently cool and useful for Eclipse, where there are no worries of this happening.
Alternately, remove all the features that Microsoft has requested to be removed. Then add as many features as you can legally add. Then change the license so that your plugin can be used with Express Edition but so that it is a violation of your product's license to use the code with the non-free versions of VS.
Developers developers developers developers dev... (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.afp548.com/ | Last Journal: Monday October 28 2002, @11:31PM)
It's pretty silly to have a free, "watered down" IDE/compiler for their product, and a paid-for Pro version in the first place. They only benefit by making world class development free for everyone. The money that they make on IDE licenses must be pretty marginal to the amount of Windows licenses they sell through strong third-party dev support.
It's even worse to have a pissing match with someone that made one of their products better, and was recognized by Microsoft for doing so.
I hope student developers everywhere take note.
The guy is violating the license (Score:4, Insightful)
I kind of feel bad for this MS manager, he really went out of his way to be nice to this guy who was clearly violating the license. Now people on slashdot are going to say all kinds of nasty stuff about him without actually looking closely at the issue and seeing that he was pretty clearly in the right.
Re:The guy is violating the license (Score:5, Interesting)
What were the violation(s)?
I have no clue what happened in the conference calls, nor do I for the legal decision.. But there is no way that I could consider MS' actions in this case defensible from the e-mails. He asked, they didn't answer.. he put out an olive branch, they responded with the stick... he removed the material, they tried to rub it in and poke him in the eye.
Chilling effect (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that this could in principle happen to anyone extending MS software, this ought to be a chilling effect on use of MS APIs without a $10,000 annual partnership license. That sets a pretty high bar to participation. Let's say MS developers fall into four categories:
a. Smart and a partner. These will continue to contribute. They always did. (If you accept that they're not an oxymoron.)
b. Smart and not a partner. These will stop contributing because of the legal risk.
c. Dumb and a partner. These will continue contributing, but their contributions will be worthless.
d. Dumb and not a partner. These poor saps will continue contributing, because they're too stupid to realise they're in the gun.
All I can say is that if you screw with the bull, you get the horns. This developer would have had no problems if he'd been working in free software. That's the real lesson.
L
Notes from an MS apologist (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Weber was way, way out of line.
3. Weber should be dismissed.
4. This incident has made me doublethink our decision of going to ASP.NET for in-house app development.
5. Yet another reason not to get locked into proprietary software.
Sheesh.. that dev pushes the friggin' envelope..! (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.goaway.com/)
Whew.
Yes, I've read the entire exchange. And honestly it looks a lot like the dev is being a dick about it.
Valid Licence (Score:4, Interesting)
In Germany we have something called "Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen" which limit the stuff a company can write into it's licences, maybe England has something similar.
Microsoft ad (Score:3, Funny)
(http://www.architimmy.net/)
Here is how you really poke them with a stick (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.codepunk.com/)
The other side of the story (Score:5, Informative)
This gives MS's side of the story, including the two-year history of this issue:
http://blogs.msdn.com/danielfe/archive/2007/05/31
This follow-up blog entry gives technical details on the hacking required to get TestDriven.NET to run in VS Express:
http://blogs.msdn.com/danielfe/archive/2007/06/01
You might want to weigh both sides of the story before choosing one side or the other.
Go open source, my friend (Score:5, Insightful)
First, be open source if you want to be truly principled in all of this. Just walk away - clearly you don't like the way Microsoft operates. Have some sympathy for people in M$ who spent one helluva long time trying to avoid bringing lawyers into the mix, tell them you think their business stinks, and walk away (and get the story out there on the web).
Or, work in the spirit of Microsoft's business model. It's what a decent business person does. It seems that far from being a hobbyist you are in fact selling this tool on your website. If you want to make money out of the Microsoft ecosystem, and they're willing to invest something like a year in explaining their point of view, don't get the lawyers involved. Work with them, respect their intent.
Trying to paint M$ as the bad guys here is wrong - if things are bad, they're bad on both sides. So the license wasn't clear, but M$ spent a lot of time explaining their point of view. But no, this guy Jamie wants to get his lawyer involved. He wants to force a guy running a development team to talk about law, not about the spirit of what they're trying to achieve. That's bullshit. Jamie never discloses the content of the conference calls, he just sticks to his "let's talk legal specifics" - and then bitches when M$ does indeed come at him with lawyers.
He might be making the mistake of many programmers, of course, who think that the law operates like code. Well, just like all code has bugs, so do all legal arrangements. And when you force things to go legal instead of having principles, you might just find that the justice system allows a bug fix to be applied before it comes to a legal conclusion. For example, the courts may find that the intent of the Express edition is clear, and that in the course of a year's worth of dialogue between the two parties any confusion was clearly resolved. They might agree with Microsoft's lawyers that Jamie's own offering of different commercial editions of the TestDriven product indicates a good understanding of Microsoft's commercial model. They might express sympathy for M$'s efforts to get a free version out for hobbyists, and forgive them for not having a 100% airtight technical and legal solution to prevent it from being extended. After all, it seems reasonable to expect that people can act in accordance to the spirit of an arrangement, without needing otherwise pointless effort being spent on perfectly restrictive measures, doesn't it?
The courts may therefore conclude that although Jamie has not committed such a blatant breach of contract that M$ can claim damages, he has violated the clear intent of the Express edition and must therefore restrain from offering TestDriven for Visual Studio Express.
Work to open source principles, work to business principles - both of those I can understand. Work to a principle something like, "it's your fault if I can get *my* lawyer to prove that *your* lawyers didn't put a sufficiently airtight contract in place", and you're just another weasel making the world a worse place for everyone.
Re:Go open source, my friend (Score:4, Insightful)
What are you on? Microsoft - and all other large companies - make no recognition of the concept of "the spirit" of anything. The written word, and what you can get a judge to believe the words mean, is all that counts. If you're going to deal with them on the basis of the spirit of their business model you might as well give yourself a nice open wound and jump into the shark tank at Sea World.
So the license wasn't clear, but M$ spent a lot of time explaining their point of view.
Yeah, well, their view is their view. There are two people in this thing and no point of law give one's POV precedence over the other, and that's good if you pause for a moment and think about the devastating effects on consumers it would have if a company was allowed to review their contracts' meanings after the fact.
The bigger issue here is that, as far as I can see, there is in fact no legal stance of any kind. Microsoft's software has not been changed by the developer in any way and no contract existed (at least, no real contract with signitures, consideration and all that tiresome legal stuff that Microsoft ignores when it suits them to) so really there is no "legal arrangement" of any kind other than the concept of ownership. Copyright has not been broken and as far as I can see no trade law or contract law has relevance. Obviously, MS can pay a team of lawyers to argue otherwise until the heat death of the universe but that's just using the courts to bully through your own arbitrary view with no regard to the legalities of either party's actions.
The courts may therefore conclude that although Jamie has not committed such a blatant breach of contract that M$ can claim damages, he has violated the clear intent of the Express edition and must therefore restrain from offering TestDriven for Visual Studio Express.
I very much doubt that the English courts would see it that way since Microsoft has no contract to show as evidence and has consistantly refused to show what part of their self-declared license was breached by these actions.
No wrong, either legal or moral, appears to have been done, and no damage has accrued to Microsoft except by their own unreasonable beahviour which is making it clear just how hostile to outside programmers they can be if those programmers show more skill than Microsoft's own bunch of third-raters.
TWW
Colour me not surprised. (Score:5, Insightful)
<rant>
So you develop components for closed software with proprietary languages on commercial operating systems, and you're surprised when the powers that be want to control what your components do?
If you lock yourself to a vendor, and that vendor acts against your interests, you're screwed. If the vendor acts against its own interests, as is the case here, you may also get screwed. By locking yourself to that vendor, you've locked yourself to their decisions, as misguided as they may be.
It's obvious that control is more valuable to Microsoft than the developers who work with its systems. Tough. Either deal with it, or get out.
</rant>
Apologies for ranting, but although I understand that some people must develop on the MS platform, I simply cannot understand those who choose to voluntarily. The rant is directed at the latter.
It is his own fault. (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday December 10 2006, @10:25AM)
If you try this with closed source software of an international quasi-monopolistic mega-corporation you should not be surprised if you get slapped should you do something they do not like or is against their rules.
We are used to much nastier stuff from MS than just threatening or ruining a single little programmer.
How can you trust someone who... (Score:3)
...uses sentences like:
Er, that would be a question or request, you tosser.
And:
Hateful. Just hateful. The guy probably spends most of the day synergising his potentials.
Q. What do you call 100 dead language lawyers at the bottom of the sea?
A. Microsoft UK
He used a backdoor hack. (Score:3, Insightful)
He even gave an example to the MS drone in his email correspondence, which is still up on his webserver.
http://www.mutantdesign.co.uk/downloads/ProjectRe
While I agree that it's technically possible, it's using an extension point which was not intended to provide full add-in access. Yes, no secret APIs were abused, no reverse engineering necessary. It violates the spirit of the agreement rather than the letter (which is that technical measures to prevent add-in use should not be circumvented). They removed the add-in manager and loader, which they figured should be enough. Mr Cansdale has effectively written his own add-in loader and used an alternate technical means (otherwise known as "hack") to get it executed. The fact that the "technical measures" used to prevent add-ins from loading were not implemented in a bullet-proof manner does not change the fact that they are present, and that they have been circumvented.
Yes, I think Microsoft are being dumb - being able to run the software you want is the sales driver for any OS, and being able to develop your own is the one sure way of getting exactly the software you want. Artificially restricting the features of your development tools so your IDE team can be a profit centre is of questionable value. Removing the ability of hobbyists to use professional testing features is fostering yet another generation of sloppy programmers who will have to adjust to become professionals.
But Mr Cansdale is in the wrong, IMHO. MS agreed to "play nice" by releasing a slick, functional, professional IDE for free, despite the risks of attracting antitrust attention. Mr Cansdale has responded by thumbing his nose at the spirit of that bargain. If he really wanted a version of his product that runs in a free IDE, he could have written a version for SharpDevelop without treading on the 300-lb gorillas toes. Or he could have just kept his hack to himself (he wrote it because he was using the Express edition to develop TestDriven.NET
By the way - the rumour that you cannot use Express to develop a commercial product is not true. There would be no point in imposing such a condition, simply because the compiler is free (beer) available. You have no means of proving that any
Point 4 in the following :
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/support
Yes, there are no licensing restrictions for applications built using the Express Editions.
I think the emails have some omissions... (Score:3, Funny)
If there is a lawsuit.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ironic, but MS is right (Score:3, Informative)
(Last Journal: Tuesday September 12 2006, @03:31PM)
Re:Ironic, but MS is right (Score:5, Interesting)
One of my co workers was trying to get Microsoft licensing to explain how those wonderful bundled packages (those OEM with 5 cals everybody sells) that come with machine tools/hardware would work with our existing Microsoft license (it was standard versus enterprise and unlocked versus cals... and how does a machine with a server and SQL get licensed.. to the OEM or to the company? and who's rules control CALs) and the Microsoft guy would not actually point to a license line and say how it should work. He finally got the guy to email "something" solid as to the minimum licenses we needed to buy to use the software one of Microsoft's resellers sold us and stay legal. They're trained to point to the website.. but the EULA states the website can always change...so they won't actually quote it. great answer!!!
Microsoft is trying to rewrite the license to what they WANT it to say without actually posting that it needed to be changed. If you were to check the version right now, you'd surely find the hole closed. But Microsoft keeps no version control of back versions so you can state on date x I was allowed to do this... they only deal with one right now, in the vein of Orwell and rewriting "history" as needed for the lawyers. Microsoft doesn't like the program, but knows they don't have an actual case. They're arguing the rules, without actually showing the rules.. then arguing the only way he could write the software is to break the rules they won't tell him. They're trying to force him to prove a double negative and he didn't take the bait.
Re:completely offtopic (Score:4, Interesting)
Trolling in those days was cool and mostly actually funny, and usually more insightful and thoughtful than the normal posts. It was also more vigorously suppressed. There were a lot more immaginative trolls going on. On-topic rewrites of popular songs, Weird Al style, were common. Some guy named Gnarphelgager or something posted long fantasies, a chapter per post, into articles over the course of weeks -- they were pretty good but homosexual rape was involved disturbingly often. You could impersonate famous people, such as Bruce Perens, by selecting a username that looked similar, such as with the period at the end. They started displaying the userid to expose that, and the song parody guys wrote "Will Real Bruce Perens Please Stand Up". Look up the user OGG_THE_CAVEMAN for some quality shit. People actually got angry about the *BSD is dying post. Goatse, ascii goatse, and etc became more popular as trolling started go down hill. This guy named Klerk kept figuring out how to make posts that made the page very wide, so their was a scroll bar at the bottom of your browser, and he could basically kill any thread with a PWP (page widening post).
The trolls were so good you had to browse at -1, otherwise you saw just shit. It was a lot of to filter though. Trolls started posting links to their work in a hidden sid called k223320inchfan, but I found out about it just as a bunch of other loosers did, and they moved to sid=10gramspoppylatex and sid=3dollarcrackho and other places. The sids were mostly ruined by a guy named Scott Lockwood, AKA Vladinator, by incessently posting links to posts of his that weren't trolls, or at least, weren't funny and worth reading like all the other trolls.
Trolling those days was high class. OGG_THE_CAVEMAN was a physics undergrad at Harvard. This chick Peridia was actually Esther Sussman, a real-life Jew, a reporter, who you would occasionally see on TV asking a question at some press conference in DC, and most improbably of all, a female. The trolls I met in real life were an eclect bunch of scattered and smart people, some owned their own companies, several were homeless, OGG like I said was at Harvard, Perida was on TV, I was . . . I'm not telling you who I am. Even Vladinator at least owned his own business. Physically it seemed like a lot of trolls were in Austin and Dallas, Texas or Kansas City, but they were mostly spread all over pretty evenly. Surprisingly, I know of no non-American trolls. There is one dude who is a Mexican immigrant, but he's here now so it doesn't count.
There was (is ?) a Troll High Council the handed out some smack down occasionally. I think before the hidden sid thing, they maintained a secret mailing list to exchange troll links on and co-ordinate efforts. They apointed some guy named George who tried to install BSD to be "King of Trolltalk" to keep order, and that worked for a while.
I'm not sure when it totally became crap. Vladinator was targeted by a committee of sid safety known as "AV3" or "Anti Vlad Triad" but there were actually 4 of them, and he set up his own blog site about guppies or sporks or something and his fan club followed him, and the sid was cool again for a while. I think the breaking point was when Klerk blew his brains out with a shotgun. After getting over the shock of that mind-widening news, I was refered to the blogspot posting of his boyfriend, and had to comprehend that he actually was gay. Then I had to deal with the fact that a lot of these gay shit the trolls were talking about might actually be real, not just homephobic locker room type shit, and that some of these guys spewing out the gay rape fantasies might know way too much about my physical location -- and they have guns. Shotguns were purchased and I started using proxies to communicate.
I am skiping over a lo
Perspectives (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://honeypot.net/ | Last Journal: Friday April 07 2006, @09:33AM)
What's interesting is your fond recollection, that trolltalk was noble and glorious council, that the sublime art of trolling was a magnificent contribution to Slashdot and Internet culture. To everyone else here, the trolls - regardless of education or social standing or media visibility - were a bunch of asshat punks dead set on ruining a good thing for everyone.
You laughed at the PWP hacks. We sighed at the interesting stories that were made unreadable.
You liked all the homosexual rape serials. We learned not to read anything more than a couple of paragraphs long.
You waxed nostalgic about goatse. We cringed and trained ourselves not to click links.
I'm sure that somewhere out there, a couple of guys are kicking back and talking about the time they lit a cat on fine - you know, the good old days. To the rest of the world, they're not a couple of new-millenium James Deans. They're just a couple of sociopathic misfits that don't care what they ruin for their own entertainment. Well, enjoy your happy memories of those halcyon days, but don't be surprised that no one outside your clique has the same take on events.
Slashdot is older and more mature and a little more boring these days. And to be honest, that's just fine.