From The Register :
As a hobby, Cansdale developed an add-on for Microsoft Visual Studio. TestDriven.NET allows unit test suites to be run directly from within the Microsoft IDE. Cansdale gave away this gadget on his website, and initially received the praises of Microsoft.
In fact, Microsoft was so pleased with him, it gave him a Most Valuable Professionals (MVP) award, which it says it gives to “exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who voluntarily share their high quality, real world expertise with others”.
However, his cherished status did not last. In December 2005, he started getting emails from a Microsoft executive called Jason Weber. The problem was that TestDriven.NET supported the Express edition of Visual Studio. Express is the cut-down version that anyone can download for free from the Microsoft website. It is limited in various ways, and is intended only for hobbyists and students. Everyone else is supposed to shell out for the paid-for versions.
…
and in the last few days has hit Cansdale with a flurry of lawyers’ letters, also available on his website [see here and here]. Cansdale now has until 4pm Wednesday 6 June to disable the Visual Studio Express features of his product.
We await the deadline with bated breath.
Read the full story here.
P.S.
This story was SlashDot-ed. It is fun to read the comments.
P.P.S
Another issue which rubbed the tech community in the wrong way was the licensing of the Ribbon UI which comes with MS Office 2007. Microsoft is not providing you any components to help you create the UI, but if you decide to create your own UI component which looks like the Office Ribbon UI (which is nothing more than buttons, drop down boxes and menu items on a tabbed container), then you need Microsoft’s permission. Funny old Bill ! Don’t forget to read the comments on this blog.
