twitter's Journal: Microsoft Rewards MVP with Lawsuit

The Register reports the abuse dished out to MVP Jamie Cansdale, who made a plugin for Visual Studio Express.

The problem was that TestDriven.NET supported the Express edition of Visual Studio. Express is the cut-down version ... Cansdale says he used Express to develop TestDriven.NET

[After being awarded a Microsoft MVP] he started getting emails from a Microsoft executive called Jason Weber. [saying] 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 denied the reverse engineering charges and things got uglier. He's posted the email exchanges and may or may not give in by the June 6th deadline given by Microsoft.

I hope he gives in and never looks at Visual Studio again. It's clear that Microsoft's best interests are not his or his friends and that all of his work has been wasted. The goal of non free software is to keep users helpless and divided, so they are not allowed to really help themselves or their neighbors.