Microsoft Vs. TestDriven.NET 418
Erebus writes "Jamie Cansdale released a free addin to Visual Studio back in 2004 to help developers build unit tests. His only problem was, he enable his addin for all versions of VS - including the Express addition which isn't suppose to support addins. After over a year of trying to talk with Microsoft and understand how and why he was in violation of their license agreement, during which they would never explain specifically which clause in the license was being violated, they sent the lawyers after him and pulled his MVP status. To top it all off, Jamie is actually a Java developer by day — his addin was originally developed just as a hobby project. A full account is available on his blog, including all email correspondence he had with Microsoft and the now 3 letters received from Microsoft lawyers. The lead product manager for Visual Studio Express has responded to Jamie's posts."
english (Score:3, Funny)
Re:english (Score:5, Funny)
Good work by the additors.
Re:english (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly it was not write by someone who's first language is not english,
Native speakers can write badly too! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Slight understatement there, methinks.
The standard of written and spoken English amongst native speakers is often significantly poorer than amongst non-native speakers, and for a perfectly good reason : native speakers learn their mother-language mostly from people who have had
Use the correct phrase please (Score:3, Insightful)
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ah
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why not? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
Test Driven Development is not, itself, a bad thing, but if Too Many People glommed onto the underlying technology, and a culture of freedom of expression broke out, well...let us leave the unspeakable unspoken.
The whole thing is business, pure and simple. If you leave off the 'good' and 'evil' labels, the situation is easier to process.
Of course, maybe it's all a stealth advertising campaign for http://www.mingw.org/ [mingw.org]. Who can say?
Re:why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is "Microsoft Standard Practice"... (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft does this all the time. What really tests my patience with Microsoft is when they deliberately break their own products to limit their useful application in an IT environment that has the sole purpose of actually helping to install and further the case for Microsoft's own products!
We see this with Windows PE, the mini kernel'ed XP with networking, that allows us to install XP remotely (please don't comment back about BART here, we know all about BART). There are many useful applications for an open and extensible Windows PE that would allow internal IT operations to enhance operations. What Microsoft does is break this usefulness to the point where you almost must use it with something else you must buy from Microsoft. In this case yet another server for RIS, etc.
The Windows XP web update is another case in point. Have you ever wondered why the Express update deliberately leaves off a "Download Patches Now" button, and instead just provides the "Install Now" button? It's to deliberately push you into buying another Windows 2003 server just to run WUS (Windows Update Services http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsserver/ws
Believe me, Linux is getting easier to mold a cohesive IT architecture around than Windows because of all the wrenches Microsoft has thrown into the works. Because of Microsoft's own business practices, local IT total-cost-of-ownership is very high, as well as the personal frustration that goes along with it.
Microsoft in essence wants you to buy into their environment, and then buy into it again and again by deliberately preventing you from developing your own automation practices. Why automate anything when Microsoft can sell you another automation "solution"!
My general point is that Microsoft can never provide a "one solution fits all" product line. Every IT department is different, and needs to develop its own internal automation practices. Microsoft, by being mischevious about its business practices, serves to interfere with in-house automation to the point of asking the question "why are we using Microsofts' products?"
Even if Microsoft could provide a "one solution fits all" architecture, then that wouldn't serve the need of most businesses in general because most businesses actually need to differentiate themselves from other businesses in most ways that matter. If your internal operations are the same as everyone elses, then you don't gain a competitive advantage by streamlining operations for your company's product line.
Microsoft simply needs to stop this foolishness of "vendor lock-in" and allow people to interoperate with their products and services more openly. Otherwise, I don't see a future for Microsoft in the light of an Open Source world.
Re:why not? (Score:4, Informative)
How about we begin with an honest reading of the blog?
Visual Studio Express was a labor of love. It was a small miracle getting Express to be available both for free and for commercial use for customers let alone the engineering work to get it up and running, We made a business decision to not allow 3rd party extensibility in Express. The reason we're able to offer Express for free and even let developers build commercial applications with Express is because we limit 3rd party extensibility of Express, specifically by removing support macros, add-ins, and VSIP packages.
The vast majority of our customer base, now with 14 million downloads, isn't even professional developers, its non-professionals. In fact over 80% of Express registrants don't describe themselves as a "developer". From a total number perspective, beginners are the largest segment of Express customers and they still find Express too complex, it has too many features, and they see development as a means to an end (I just want to create my kids soccer league Web site). Our Express customers haven't been asked for unit testing or extensiblity in much the same way as I didn't ask or even know to ask when I grew up programming BASIC on an Apple IIe.
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Bullshit. Visual Studio Express was a clear, cold, completely rational marketing decision. Don't try to sell me this shit about "labour of love".
strike
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http://www.charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudi
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The college case is an important facet: hook them while they're young.
Of course, once people realize that it's all really text anyway, and these got-more-icons-than-an-orthodox-cathedral environments are just another case of the means obscuring the end, then the people mature into simpler environments.
Truly, if your tools doesn't run just fine in a console, what good are they?
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in about an hour I can create a functioning front end, with or without web functionality and with ODBC interface into SQL, Oracle, or just about any other backend known to man, and i can do it in at least 3 common well known languages. What other development environment will let me do that?
Well, if you drop the restriction to ODBC, I think either Eclipse [eclipse.org] or NetBeans [netbeans.org] will fill the bill. Both support C/C++ and Java, and Eclipse also supports Tcl and NetBeans supports Ruby. Sun Studio [sun.com] supports C/C++, FORTRAN and Fortress, although I doubt you could create a simple database-backed app with a GUI in an hour. Not with Fortress, anyway, which is all I've used SS for.
In about an hour I can teach a novice programmer how to create a fully functional windowed application that can actually do something, again in multiple languages, and using a familiar interface.
Great, now try changing the interface. What if you have to deploy your app with a couple of ancient Motif-based apps (or a couple
Re:why not? (Score:4, Informative)
And then there's Ruby on Rails which does almost all of *that* for you, leaving very little work for you to do. You can get the entire open source stack in a single archive for Windows, called InstantRails, and there are plugins for Eclipse to integrate in that too.
Visual Studio might seem really good if you only ever read marketing hype. But once you get in the trenches and try real platforms with real development environments, the reality is entirely different.
Re:why not? (Score:4, Funny)
Shoot at foot... (Score:4, Interesting)
What is it about Microsoft and reinventing perfectly good tools. First they tried to replace Nant with MsBuild, with limited success. They're trying to reinvent Subversion and Cruisecontrol with the Microsoft Team System. They are the ultimate NIH company. I've started to form the opinion that this is unsustatinable for Microsoft. You can't keep reinventing and supporting tools like this forever, because no matter how many programmers you have there OSS movement has more. They will keep producing high-quality tools faster than you can release competitors.
People used to complain that Sun were control freaks about Java. What did Sun do? They listened and GPLed Java. I think the guys at Sun have come to a similiar conclusion to me. Your products are part of an ecology and the ecology is always bigger than one company. What you want to do is foster a larger ecology for your products and hope that this translates to sales.
I admire Sun for this approach, it's risky but it shows maurity in face of change ushered in at the hands of OSS. Microsoft seems to have no strategy for tackling OSS outside of the United States. Over here, software patents don't exist. They may win the battle but be swamped by the tidal wave from abroad.
I use TestDriven every single day I'm in work and I can tell you that this makes the licensed copy of Visual Studio 2005 (paid at full price) a much more functional piece of software. To me, this is validation of the ecology; the open source product made me feel that I'm getting more value out of the purchase.
It's this affect that Sun hopes GPLing Java will bring to their revenues. I for one think they're right.
Simon.
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new here?
"I use TestDriven every single day I'm in work and I can tell you that this makes the licensed copy of Visual Studio 2005 (paid at full price) a much more functional piece of software. To me, this is validation of the ecology; the open source product made me feel that I'm getting more value out of the purchase."
k, but validating the ecology is of no interest to Microsoft. If the open source package makes MS product A more valuable,
Re:Shoot at foot... (Score:4, Interesting)
First, they are a software company and they sell solutions, not products. MsBuild integrates with all the other MS tools including Visual Studio and TFS. I would rather have one solution that works well than having to pass through the open source gauntlet of choosing from 20 different tools and trying to make them all work together. Comparing TFS to Subversion is insultint - to TFS. TFS is much more than Subversion, think Subversion + Continuum + Bugzilla (somewhat) + requirements tracking + other tools.
In short, your post is entirely wrong. I don't see you bitching about ClearCase, Synchronicity, or other commercial tools. It's just Microsoft that is silly for releasing products when there are already all these "great" open source tools.
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Sure why not? You said yourself that their business model is solutions not products. So why not have TFS use subversion if subversion has the features they need? They could still build the rest of the features on top. It's a political reason not to, not a technical one.
And yes you do hear people complain about Cle
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BTW, subversion can be used over WebDAV, which is arguably even more open than some web service, since it's completely standardized (as opposed to an openly accessible, but undocumented RPC interface).
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You said:
"Subversion doesn't have all the features they need, that's the problem. For one thing, TFS is open"
I simply countered that point, which is clearly incorrect, as Subversion is as open, if not moreso. If you have other reasons, great, but you should have used them to support the argument in your original post.
Re:Shoot at foot... (Score:5, Insightful)
He's saying that MS should not try to squash community efforts to create great software on Windows platforms. You might need to read that again for it to sink in. He's not saying stop writing software altogether. He's not saying discontinue SQL server because there's some shareware database out there.
What he is saying is that they don't need to control every successful application on the Windows platform. If they try to, they will both a) breed bad will amongst the developer community, which will hinder Windows application development, which will cause great development to happen in other platforms, and b) waste a lot of money and time in development and support trying to fill every software niche that exists in a platform. They can't write *all* the software for Windows.
Simply put, MS alone cannot provide as great a Windows experience as MS + developer community can. But every time some great developer makes a wonderful product for Windows, they either squash it or snatch it up and abandon it. At every opportunity they destroy the Windows development community. Not only do they want you to run only Windows, the want you running only MS software on it. And they just won't be able to provide all the software that a user will want on their system. It's the old Soviet model of central planning, where Moscow decided the details of the economy from Khazakstan to Siberia. Eventually it implodes under its own weight.
Re:Shoot at foot... (Score:5, Insightful)
On Windows, I would bet that the three most widely used applications are IE, Outlook, and Word/Office. All provided by MS. Like I said earlier, MS wants to be the sole provider of *all* software on your Windows computer. If something they don't control begins to appear somewhat popular, they either squash it or buy it out. They want to be the sole provider, controlling everything.
Comparatively, almost everything in Linux was written by a different person or organization. Some of those command-line utilities are 20 years old, and still going strong. Tools such as 'grep' and 'find' works just as well today as they did 20 years ago. What industry protocol has ever come from a small-time MS developer? Almost all of our modern computing standards -- ftp, http, email, came from small-time unix developers. Neither MS nor its developer community have made much contribution to computing in general.
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A few things. First, Java was free.
You're a little confused, to the point where your statement is ambiguous. Originally, it was free as in beer, now, because of community pressure, it's free as in speech.
Comparing it to MS's products is disingenuous.
How so?
Microsoft has a lot of free software, but Visual Studio has not historically been free.
Uh, I'm not aware of *any* free-as-in-speech software from Microsoft.
They released a dumbed down version so people could play with it, but VS makes MS money. Java is great and all, but Joe Bloe developer never had to pay for it.
What does that have to do with MS trying to control the community, instead of allowing greater freedom, and thus releasing the creative potential of the development community?
Second, comparing Sun to MS also rings a little false. MS makes boatloads of money, Sun doesn't.
Um, so you can only compare MS to companies that make a boatload of money? You mean a
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Seems fair to me (Score:2, Informative)
If you don't agree with the license terms of the software/artwork/music then don't use/extend it.
Re:Seems fair to me (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft simply responded with "it violates the licence, but we're not going to tell you where."
More than likely, they screwed up and adhering strictly to the letter of the EULA (and not the spirit of the program) it is not specifically forbidden, thus implicitly allowed.
Re:Seems fair to me (Score:5, Informative)
Actually they responded with 5 pages of documents stating exactly the clause [asp.net].
("You may not work around any technical limitations in the software.")
Of course, it's such an incredibly vague sentence one can understand why he didn't think it applied. And I bet they don't want to ever take that one to court, which is whey they had their manager "talk to him on the phone to plead with him".
Microsoft getting screwed by their own EULA
MOD PARENT WAY UP! Jamie violated NOTHING! (Score:3, Insightful)
WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
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Don't like microsoft but the same issues apply to any other license like creative commons and gnu.
Except that those licenses have to do almost exclusively with redistribution, and even then aim to preserve rights, not take them away. They don't restrict the use of software, or anybody's right to extend or interoperate with it.
If you don't agree with the license terms of the software/artwork/music then don't use/extend it.
No argument with you there. When I see all the ridiculous crap that my friends committed to proprietary software put up with almost daily, I'm happy to say "no thanks".
not to be all nice to microsoft, but (Score:2, Insightful)
After all, it's not as if people are forced to use visual studio express, they could always use something else if they don't like the terms. If you want to use it, you use it the way they say, that seems obvious to me.
I have an open source project, and I would get mighty pissed if someone broke my terms. Ok mine are the gpl, but it's the same thing.
I prefer mingw studio anyway..
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If they don't want addin support in the free edition, disable it in the product.
If someone enables it and it works, what exactly has he done wrong?
Only if your terms make sense. If, for example, you said "nobody with a yellow shirt can use my software" ... that would be your term, but it would be a stupid term
Re:not to be all nice to microsoft, but (Score:5, Insightful)
Continuing with the shirt analogy, it's like having two programs, let's call one 'Express' and one 'Enterprise'
Express feature table says 'No support for users wearing yellow shirts.'
Enterprise feature table says 'Supports all colors and color combinations on shirts.'
But your legal department charges you $1 mil per EULA, so you decide to just put the EULA for the Enterprise version with the Express version, after a simple s/Enterprise/Express/g;
Now you have a user calling in wanting support and the techs ask his shirt color and version. He says yellow and Express. The techs say this is in violation of the EULA, but in reality, there is no clause refusing him service.
The feature table is not a contract. The EULA is, and he agreed to the EULA that you were cheap on that didn't explicity exclude support for yellow-shirted users. You are now up doodoo creek without a paddle...
Re:not to be all nice to microsoft, but (Score:5, Funny)
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It is.
If someone enables it and it works, what exactly has he done wrong?
If you hack your sat. Tv card to get things you're not supposed to, have you done something wrong? Yes, you have.
Only if your terms make sense. If, for example, you said "nobody with a yellow shirt can use my software"
It doesn't matter if you believe th
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If they don't want addin support in the free edition, disable it in the product.
It is.
It isn't . The author of this plugin made it work, therefore by definition it in't disabled. If MS really didn't want plugins to work in the Express edition of VS, then they should have removed support for it entirely.
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It matters where they said 'no addins' though. There's a difference between a bullet point in a product comparison table and a clause in the EULA. Where the problem lies is Microsoft has yet to point out the specific part in the EULA that forbids addins for Express, instead falling on the spirit in which the project was designed.
If 'no addins' is not in the licence, Jamie is not breaking the li
Re:not to be all nice to microsoft, but (Score:5, Insightful)
However they were not happy with the way the "good faith" negotiations proceeded, and now they are trying to use the law to get their way. The question is, do they have the right to legally enforce their ethos? If there were a contract between Microsoft and TestDriven.NET, then that may limit what TestDriven.NET is allowed to do. However it does not appear that this is the case. In fact, it appears that there is no legal reason why someone can't program add-ins for VS Express. Microsoft may not like it, but it's not illegal. (Please correct me if I'm wrong on that point.) I disagree. If I obtain a product (buy it for $X or download a free product under certain licensing terms) then I can use it however I want (limited only by the law). If something in the EULA makes it illegal to use add-ins, then I suppose Microsoft can claim that end-users of TestDriven.NET are violating the VS Express EULA... but that still doesn't make TestDriven.NET's actions illegal. You're mixing two different issues, however. The GPL is a license that (along with copyright) provide a legal framework that delineates what you can and cannot legally do. That is a legal issue. If you release your GPL project, and then find that someone is using your code to run a porn website (but is complying with the GPL), then you may claim that their usage is against the "ethos" of your project--but that still doesn't give you the legal right to prevent their use. You gave them a license to use the software, and that's what they are doing. You can be annoyed, but you cannot sue.
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But is it illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet he spends the entire post talking only about the "ethos" part of it (describing their numerous good faith attempts to convince Jamie Cansdale to stop distributing his product), but he never explains what the illegal part is. Clearly the Visual Studio team feels that Jamie is violating the "ethos" of their project (their "business plan," in fact). On the other hand, Jamie probably feels that the Visual Studio team is violating the "ethos" of his project when they try to limit it. So whose "ethos" is more important?
At no point, however, does the blog post mention anything about how the Visual Studio EULA could prohibit the distribution of TestDriven.NET. After all, I can redistribute copies of TestDriven.NET without even owning a copy of Visual Studio--so obviously I'm not bound by the Visual Studio EULA.
I can think of no legal reason to prohibit what Jamie is doing... and apparently, neither can Dan Fernandez. Has anyone found a nugget of legal truth in the other documents?
Said the same thing at the same time (Score:2)
I said the same thing too. Reading that response just said to me "we don't like what he did, we didn't plan for it, but since we're a bigger company, he needs to show respect and stop."
When has Microsoft ever played by that rule? Microsoft did to IBM and Apple what Jamie did to Microsoft- find a method to extend and exploit the functionality of someone else's product. Nobody can produce the EULA language that shows a breach, only vague references to "but that'll hurt our business plan!" It's sad that
Skilled corporate guy masquerading as hobbyist (Score:4, Insightful)
Is he attempting to steer the discussion (and basis of MS's actions) away from ground that may not be as firm as MS would like to pretend it is? "Our ickle novice programmers don't want or need TestDriven.NET". Then they won't use it, Dan.
If it really was a "labor of love" for Dan, then I'd question why he's pouring his heart and soul into products for a company like Microsoft, and consider him somewhat deluded. On the other hand, he's a manager, not a low-level Bill-Gates-is-God-Kool-Aid-drinking peon, so you'll excuse my scepticism if I consider this to be an attempt to play the "I'm one of you and really enthusiastic about this" sympathy card.
The tone of such comments as
I also notice that he states here [msdn.com]:
Lying corporate fuck.
Re:But is it illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe there's not an easy way for MS to completely disable the add-ins without shooting themselves in the foot, or maybe they didn't have time to do it before the release date, or maybe they just didn't feel like it. So what? Just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you SHOULD.
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Well then maybe they should have actually said you can't use add-ins with it in the EULA at the very least. They didn't, so it's their own fault if people do that with the product that they paid for.
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What was done here was to leverage a feature of the properties panel as an attach vector to worm in functionality. The property panel supports "custom editors". That a feature open to any
Re:But is it illegal? (Score:5, Interesting)
So the question is: "Is TestDriven.NET legally required to alter their product so as to enforce the terms of someone else's EULA?" Isn't it the end-user, who combines VS Express and TestDriven.NET that is in violation of the EULA?
Or perhaps the real question is: "Are ridiculous terms in an EULA, such as 'thou shalt not make the product do things we didn't intend for it to do' actually legally enforceable?"
More details (Score:5, Interesting)
1) You said that by using Intellisense I may be in breach of the
dissasembly clause in the VS SDK license.
2) You said that by working out how to use an API by looking at the
public type and method names I may be in breach of the reverse
engineering clause in the VS SDK license.
3) You said that by adding a button to the Express SKU interface I may
be in breach of Microsoft's copyright.
#3 is particularly funny
Re:But is it illegal? (Score:4, Insightful)
The full paragraph in question is:
Note that the author is based in the UK (his company, Mutant Design Limited, is registered to an address in London), so the "applicable law" includes both UK and EU law. MS's complaint seems to mostly be that he reverse engineered the software in order to determine how to make his extension (they also seem to be suggesting he worked around a technical limitation, but that doesn't actually appear to be the case to me -- the software was capable of doing this all along, it just wasn't documented how to make it do it). I'll grant it is almost certainly true: he did reverse engineer VSE in order to determine how to make his extension work with it.
However, he is almost certainly allowed by EU law to perform reverse engineering. See this summary of the legal status of reverse engineering in various disciplines [jenkins-ip.com], specifically:
If TestDriven.NET isn't an interoperable non-competing program, I don't know what is.
Re:But is it illegal? (Score:4, Informative)
First of all, there is no such thing as "EU law". There are EU directives which do not (as far as I know) bind a single national court in the EU. The way they work is they require all the countries to implement national laws with the effect of the directive text. If there is no such law, the courts probably won't take the directives and apply them. Enforcement works by the EU Comission suing the country that has not in due time implemented the directive. This, if what you say, might or might not be bad for the developer of the software.
Second, with the scarce information I have about what was done, I gather the author of the software used APIs defined in
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The DMCA contains a similar clause [cornell.edu] - see section F. To make a long story short, if you didn't pirate the software, you can reverse-engineer it for the purposes of interoperability. And you can do it for the purposes of creating a competing product, as well. (or at least, it doesn't say you can't.)
EULA = End User Licence Agreement (Score:2)
What? (Score:2)
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Why? So microsoft can lose more users? You use a very curious form of the phrase "one person responsible." How is he the "one person responsible" if microsoft is the one that terminates it? Grow up and put responsibility where it belongs, on Microsoft. Like it's his fault MS decides they don't like t
Having read the MS response (Score:5, Interesting)
The MS project manager goes on about working with Jamie to clear up the Express situation, but doesn't explain their reasoning beyond calling what he did "illegal."
First, that's not the way to treat your community. Either explain to him and to us exactly what he did that was wrong, beyond the vague wording at the beginning of not being in the "spirit" of Express editions. Second, when can Microsoft unilaterally declare breach of contract "illegal?"
I use DevC++ for all my hobby needs and teaching the kiddo. After this, I would never switch to MS C++ Express or VB Express, even if it was a vastly superior product. I just need some syntax highlighting and compiler integration. I don't want to dance around legal threats over what Microsoft's "spirit" is this week.
Isn't this the company that VALUES the community? (Score:2)
(And now, for your pleasure, some filler text to get by the lameness filter. Apparently Slashdot doesn't like it when you post a response mostly in caps.)
Exactly (Score:4, Insightful)
All the manager had to do was say the EULA says "xyz," and is therefore in breach of our license. He never does that (and it looks like nobody else really has either). He says the EULA is violated, but then goes on to explain how the plugin goes against what Microsoft wants. And? I don't care that you sell software, give it away, or wear it around on a fashionable necklace, your business case isn't MY business. If you can't make money doing what you are doing, then nobody should defend you, really.
It really just looks like Microsoft was caught with it's pants down, and they are scrambling to obfuscate their screw-up.
Re:Exactly (Score:4, Insightful)
"All the manager had to do was say the EULA says "xyz," - they did say that - twice.
Developing addins for Express edition is a violation of the EULA. The manager stated that he made numerous attempts to resolve the situation. They explained that companies are not permitted to ship addins for Express. Jamie ignored them.
As the manager says after "close to two years of trying to avoid escalating this situation, we felt compelled to deliver our message in a different form".
If you are using test cases chances are you are a professional developer. In addition in the spirit of Express you should probably be writing your own test case engine and not using someone elses.
Jamies actions are clearly not in the "spirt" of the express edition, they are also legally out of bounds - it's unfortunate that he was so difficult about the situation.
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So with all this absence of any form of proof about the illegality, it seems MS screwed up here, and should simply live with the consequences instead of citing 'ethos'. Microsoft preaching ethos, bah. When the fox starts preaching, look to your hens.
How far can licenses go (Score:5, Interesting)
"3 letters received from Microsoft lawyers" (Score:4, Funny)
BFD? (Score:2)
I use these tools daily.
Kind in mind: This argument is about the integration of a well-known tool into Studio, not it's use altogether. One can use these tools with Express via their independent UI's. MS is merely trying to keep the floodgates closed on the Express version because it's in their profitable pocket to sell that "integration" feature. There are quite a few tools to cram into Studio, not all good IMO. For the "folks at home" cracking out Express, good for you, but learn to
Somebody's lying... (Score:3, Interesting)
"As for Jamie, we've been asking him in multiple emails and conference calls to stop extending (just Express) since before Visual Studio 2005 even shipped. 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."
Something's rotten in the state of Denmark...
Convenient translation of Fernandez' response (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: "Jamie is interfering with our attempt to devalue various Free Software tools."
Translation: "Microsoft legal doesn't understand the value of giving away software"
Translation: "Our code base is such an encumbered mess that disabling features was an arduous task."
Translation: "The only way people will buy our crap is if the one feature they need can't be had for free, and their whole product is already implemented using our IDE, making it harder to switch to some other product, perhaps a Free one."
Translation: "We decided upon a truly stupid licensing model, and now our customers who paid good money to be able to create extensions are pissed off that we did a shitty job of preventing unlicensed ones from working on a free product."
(No translation needed - it just doesn't make sense! If the extension fits, you must acquit!)
Translation: "Yet almost every time, he has been logical and reasonable, instead of knuckling under."
Translation: "But we thought we had him nailed down when we threatened to sow his ground with salt, burn his houses, rape his cattle, and ride off on his women."
Translation: "He finally came to his senses and just released the damned thing, so we decided to point more guns at him."
Translation: "Most people who download this software aren't pros who would pay for our software anyway. In spite of this, I'm so angry I forgot my apostrophe."
"They're just people who needed a VS IDE to compile some jackass' project."
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Shame on moderators? Shame on YOU (Score:2)
This post is not at all a troll. I am not saying things I don't believe in order to elicit a desired response. I am not trolling. Nor is it flamebait, because the intent behind my comment was not to piss people off, but to help bring a light into the darkness.
Shame on you for trying to cause people to mod me down by mischaracterizing my comment. You are part of the problem.
Is
Convenient translation of Drinkypoo's response (Score:2)
Seriously, I've never see someone so completely reword someone else's words into flamebait, just so they could then flame them.
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I almost ruined my keyboard when I read this. Thanks for the laugh.
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Who is more foolish, the fool, or the fool that follows him?
What the...? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is there a reason they can't just take out (or never put in) the feature of VS Express they don't want anyone to use?
ObBadAutoAnalogy: Rather than post speed limits, why not pass a law that cars coming off the assembly line must be restricted to 55 mph? (I told you it was a bad analogy.)
But seriously, the VS Express guy makes it sound like this is some stand alone project. If that is so, why does it do these things they explicitly don't want it to do? My guess is, VS Express is 99% the same code as VS Super Premium, with that 1% being switches to turn off the stuff MS wants you to pay for.
It sounds like the daily wear/long wear contact lense hub bub from a few years back. In that case, the company sold cheap daily wear contact lenses. The directions were to wear for one week then throw them away. They also sold more expensive long term lenses with directions to remove and clean each night.
Turned out, the only difference was the directions. You could buy the cheap lenses and just use and clean them as you would the expensive lenses.
I say, if you don't want people getting expensive contact lenses for a cheap price, don't put a cheap price on your expensive lenses. If you don't want people overclocking your CPUs, don't underclock faster CPUs. And if you don't want people developing extensions for the free express edition, don't release the extensible version wrapped in the express version EULA.
TestDriven clearly violates the license .. (Score:3, Informative)
It's a classic example of the differences between the Open Source and the closed sourced licensing model. I think it's perfectly clear, they provide a limited version of the product for free, the license forbids extending the functionality of Express. TestDriven extends the functionality, therefore it violates the license:
'You may not work around any technical limitations [asp.net] in the software'
Re:TestDriven clearly violates the license .. (Score:5, Insightful)
You just clearly stated the very reason why his software is NOT in violation. The intent that the writer of the EULA was probably trying to achieve was to prevent extension. However, the developers failed to actually disable the extension functionality. There is no "technical limitation" to work around here. The "limitations" that prevent the use of extensions are not technical ones, they are simply documentational - Microsoft claims that extensions don't work on Express, so people believe them and don't try to extend it. This guy discovered that it atually works just fine. So, where's the "workaround" of "technical limitations"? Microsoft intentionally wrote the extension functionality into the software, and failed to disable it. He's just using their feature as designed.
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OK, so lets say that you are correct about the technical limitation (I have no idea if you are or not). If that is the case, then MAYBE, using TestDrive.NET with Express is a violation of the EULA.
But the writing of TestDrive.NET was likely done on the full version of Visual Studio. So the developers probably did not violate the EULA. At best MS has a case that END USERS (the ones bound by End User Licencing Agreements) who use a plugin (any plug in, not just this one) with Express, are violating the ter
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However, a user of Express gets access to features they're not supposed to when they fire up TestDriven. That would place any blame on the Express User, not Jamie, right?
Sort of like, it's okay to write a program that's a maphack for WOW, if you never use WOW software when you
So.. (Score:2, Insightful)
-Ryan
Silly to judge without info... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because on the one hand if the developer is actually violating something he agreed to (barring the discussion about how much of the fine print in a click through EULA can actually be enforced in court...) then there's not a lot of wiggle romm. If ton the other hand this is just M$ being jerks -- like it looks like they are being -- then maybe the EFF ought to take a look at protecting this developer from big-time bullying.
If Express isn't designed to be extensible.. (Score:3, Interesting)
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Can't Microsoft stop this with the next release? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's stopping them from doing the same here? Can't they just release a new upgraded version of Visual Studio Express that won't run his stuff?
VS 2005 Express License (Score:2)
"9. SCOPE OF LICENSE. The software is licensed, not sold. This agreement only gives you some rights to use the software. Microsoft reserves all other rights. Unless applicable law gives you more rights despite this limitation, 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. For more information, see www.microsoft.com/licensing/userights. Yo
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If a language didn't have a sort routine built-in and you used it to write a sort routine, would you be guilty of working around "techinical limitations?" If program X is too slow written in VS Express and you find a way to make
The simple solution (Score:2)
Or do MS want to write plugins themselves, but not let anyone else do it?
Thanks Microsoft! (Score:2)
Thanks, Microsoft, for making this an issue. Had your lawyers not issued a C&D on this, /. most probably would not have posted this story and I would still not know about this cool add-in.
I can see them removing support for MS Team System on the Express versions but nothing else. IANAL but I don't see how integrating NUnit support into the IDE is a violation of anything. If MSFT didn't want you to extend their IDE, then they should not have published the EnvDTE or Extensibility assemblies.
My limi
MS violated TD.NET's EULA? (Score:2, Interesting)
Except as expressly permitted in this Agreement, Licensee shall not, and shall not permit others to:
(ii) reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise reduce the Software to source code form;
Now what did one of the emails from Microsoft say?
Thank you for not registering your project extender during installation and turning off your hacks by default. It appears that by setting a registry key your hacks can still be enabled. When do you plan to remove the Visual
I hope this goes to court (Score:3, Interesting)
EULAs are funny (Score:3, Insightful)
So if it crashes we can't restart it? And if it hangs we can't kill it? That's working around technical limitations in the software, isn't it?
As much as I feel for the guy... (Score:3, Insightful)
So the guys fight is sort of a principle of the thing, be a pest fight. He's pretty clearly in the wrong. Sorry of thats a bad opinion on the matter.
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So the guys fight is sort of a principle of the thing, be a pest fight. He's pretty clearly in the wrong. Sorry of thats a bad opinion on the matter.
No, he's absolutely 100% in the right.
Where did you get the insane idea that Microsoft has the right to tell you what kinds of things you can do with your legally purchased property?
It's truly unreal how many people just idiotically swallow bullshit like that and keep regurgitating it.
MS can say he's in the wrong all they like. Not you, not they, and not anybod
Boycott TestDriven.NET. (Score:3, Interesting)
If only people would stop and dig through the facts, you'll see that Jamie Cansdale not only acted in bad faith by first agreeing to withdraw support for the VS.NET plugin, then turning around only one day later and re-offering support for it in the betas of Visual Studio.NET Orcas. Let us for the moment concede that perhaps Jamie has some sort of valid legal case for continuing to offer his Add-in. Even if that were so, let's read the text of his letter to MS's lawyers, shall we?
" ...we the undersigned hereby jointly and severally: ... undertake ... never again in future (whether acting by ourselves, though agents or third parties, ... etc etc... to make such or any other similar offending products available for sale or otherwise on that or any website, or through any other medium ... We understand that our undertakings in this letter are undertakings to the Court and we are aware that any breach of them may be treated as a *contempt of court*. [Emphasis added by me]"
Wow. That's a pretty strong statement. That means that by re-offering the plugin for Orcas after shipping this letter, Jamie has said that he's willing to go to jail. Perhaps he'll learn some sense of ethics there.
Jamie Quells Dissent on his Blog
You probably won't hear me paraphrase Chuck D much on this blog, but don't believe the hype. Why not? Well, I as well as others (see Eric's post) have tried to write entries in his blog telling him that he's in the wrong on this issue. Somehow our posts never made it to his blog! Surprise! I wonder if it's a bug in his blogging engine. Or perhaps Jamie doesn't want to have a backlash against him start on his own weblog.
TestDriven.NET is not Free Software
If you read most of the responses to this story in Slashdot, or (believe it or not) Jamie's blog, you'll probably be led to believe that TestDriven.NET is free, open-source software, and that Jamie Cansdale is a lone developer, toiling away for the sake of the community, and being bullied by the 800 pound Gorilla that is Microsoft. Nothing could be further from the truth. TestDriven.NET costs$95 per user. Want an enterprise license? That'll be $10,500, please. Some have made the patently ludicrous claim that Jamie does give the software away for free. Not if you're using it professionally, he doesn't! His licensing terms are... wait... that's the next section! Stay with me here, this is the best part!
Jamie's License is Just as Bad
It's time to play a little game, boys and girls. The game is, "let's guess whose license agreement this is":
" ...you may use the software only as expressly permitted int his 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..."
versus:
" ...Licensee shall not, and shall not permit others to ... use the Software in any manner not expressly authorised by this Agreement."
Sound pretty familiar, don't they. The same clause that Jamie complains is vague, irrelevant, and unenforceable in the MS license is pretty much exactly the same in the TestDriven.NET license. Jamie Cansdale is a hypocrite, and he deserves to be exposed as such, and punished.
TestDriven.NET's Real Functionality comes from Software that is Free
For those of you unfamiliar with the product, TestDriven.Net is basically a plug-in for Visual Studio that allows developers to run NUnit, MBUnit, and NCover tests with a click of the mouse, or a quick keystroke. It performs a few other functions, but that's about it. These products are all open-source and free. Others have labored long and hard to generate these tools, and Jamie ships them with his non-free product. All of the heavy lifting is done by these utilities -- TestDr
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http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=174297&thresh
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Not that I agree with what is going on with Jamie. All he ever asked for was the clause he was violating and he would happily remove it. They haven't provided that yet.