ReggaetonKing

Microsoft sues a hobbyist developer who creating an add-in for Visual Studio with Visual Studio Express Edition support as well. Microsoft claims the developer violates the license that came with Express Edition and wants him to stop supporting that version all together.

After reading this article on digg.com and reading the emails that came along with it. I feel Microsoft are complete dicks!

Here's a link to the article:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06...t_mvp_threats/

__________________
I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code!

Pizentios

There are many people out there with problem simular to his. The guy that started: http://www.ubcd4win.com/ has a whole section of his site for the documents that microsoft sent him over his name

http://www.ubcd4win.com/msdocuments.htm

__________________
Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand.

Check out my Blog <---updated Nov 30 2007!

sixstringartist

Very interesting. The deadline is approaching. I wonder how this will turn out.

pegasus001

This is what microsoft really is. Always wanting and seeking money. To the hell with it.

__________________
You never test the depth of a river with both feet.
The believer is happy. The doubter is wise.
Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.
The next generation will always surpass the previous one. It`s one of the never ending cycles of life.

kruptof

well if he did violate the Express licence agreements then they properly have every right to take action.

Anyways if they do go to court all the guy has to do is show his code and where in the msdn it is he says he got it from.

__________________

mackenga

It surprises me that I find myself speaking to some extent in Microsoft's defence here but I think it's only fair to point out that both sides of this argument are commercially motivated. Microsoft's license, they assert, forces Mr. Cansdale to artificially restrict his market in order to protect Microsoft's market for the non-free edition of Visual Studio. This is pretty disgusting mercantilist behaviour on Microsoft's part, admittedly, but Cansdale's motivation for (allegedly) violating this license is to increase the potential size of his market - he's no philanthropist either, at least as far as this is concerned, and if the law is on Microsoft's side then that's the way I'm sure this will pan out.

Not that I approve of this all-too-common argument that legal correctness is any indicator of moral correctness. The law is an ass and more laws than you probably imagine disproportionately favour unsavoury characters over decent people (even the law against murder discriminates against decent people; I'm pretty sure if you ran the numbers, people who abused others and made themselves unpopular would run a higher risk of being intentionally killed by others than the rest of us if murder was legalised but then that's another rant).

Personally, considering Microsoft's recent vague sabre rattling about patent violations in Linux, I think Cansdale should say he got the details of the APIs from 235 locations within MSDN, but that it would be too expensive to determine which locations those were.

__________________
"I'm not a genius. Why do I have to suffer?"