Microsoft vs TestDriven.NET - 06 June 2007Today Microsoft kindly extended
November 17, 2008 – 6:00 pmMicrosoft vs TestDriven.NET - 06 June 2007
Today Microsoft kindly extended my deadline by 24 hours so that I could further consult my lawyers. So far they have done a very good job of keeping the pressure on. This isn’t simply a case of knocking out a quick email Pirate Bay style!
Before I released support for Visual Studio Express, I made a point of carefully reading the Express EULA. After reading it I was confident that the technique I was using wasn’t in breach of the license. I am now acutely aware that if I turn out to be wrong I could end up losing everything. This isn’t a situation that any developer wants to find themselves in.
Unfortunately the alternative to fighting this is bowing down to a vague catchall clause. I am an anxious person and don’t want live in fear of this kind of thing.
It has been over a month since my last update. I just want to put to rest any rumors of TestDriven.Net’s early demise. With the help of my lawyers, I responded to Microsoft’s lawyers‘ letter and am now attempting to come to a resolution of the issues. Continuing to play this out on the blogosphere would unnecessarily antagonize the situation and undo the good progress which has been made.
To be clear I am not anti-Microsoft. I am simply a passionate advocate of unit testing for developers of all experience levels. To my mind test driven development is like climbing with ropes. Beginner climbers can gain the confidence to climb without the fear of landing in a mess at the bottom. Expert climbers can take on overhangs and other hard problems that they wouldn’t otherwise have the confidence to try. Climb without ropes if you like, but I am certainly not going to encourage it for anything outside your comfort zone.
To end on a happy note the Wells for Zo charity that many of you supported last year through the .NET Developer’s Charity Auction is about to enter a new phase. You can read about the pump workshop which is being set up in Mzuzu, Malawi later this year. There is also a photo blog which is being updated by our guy in the field (when the Internet works). Perhaps the people who suggested I put up a PayPal button to help with legal fees would prefer to save their money for something worthwhile and make a donation here instead. :-)
Microsoft vs TestDriven.NET - 31 May 2007
I have just received another courier delivered letter from Microsoft’s lawyers. That makes a total of 3 letters in 4 working days! I can see how these things can get expensive very quickly.
I’d like to highlight a couple of things in the letter.
They say that I have been in correspondence with Microsoft about these issues for many months. What they don’t take into account is that in over a year of correspondence - Microsoft consistently refused to tell me which license I was allegedly in violation of.
For example on Feb 26, 2007 Jason Weber said:
Jamie, for the reasons we discussed at great length, we believe your various extensions to the Visual Studio Express products necessarily violated the relevant license terms. We don't think it's productive to rehash those discussions.
We may have discussed this at great length, but I was never told what that the “relevant license terms” actually were! I only re-enabled Express support when Microsoft yet again failed to tell me where I was in violation. A straight answer with something I could tell my users would have resolved this.
I’m not sure where on my website this was suggested. It’s possible that they’re referring to one of the comments on the last post. They do however bring up an interesting point. The license attached to their first letter was the one for “Visual Studio 2005 Standard and Academic Editions”. It didn’t matter that the license wasn’t the Express SKU license because the wording is the same. What if it turns out that the reason I can’t add buttons to Express SKU also applies to Visual Studio 2005? I would then be forced to take down TestDriven.NET entirely. What if it also means I can’t use PopFly Explorer for Visual Studio Express? 
Update: In the comments I’ve been asked to post my reply to Microsoft’s lawyers.
Update: I have just authorized all comments after being offline for the weekend (a wedding in Scotland). Comment moderation is on to prevent spam. I do not censor comments as has been suggested.
Interface Oriented Design Book Excerpt: Inheritance and Interfaces (Chapter 5) By Ken Pugh
Finding commonality among classes makes for effective object-oriented programming. Often, programmers express that commonality using an inheritance hierarchy, since that is one of the first concepts taught in object-oriented programming. We’re going to go to the other extreme in this chapter to explore the difference between using inheritance and using interfaces. An excerpt from Interface Oriented Design.
Click here for the full article.
You must be logged in to post a comment.