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Microsoft Vs. TestDriven.NET
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."
The crux of the argument is he went over the licence terms of Express and didn't find where he was infringing. Jamie specifically emailed Microsoft asking for the clause in question so he could justify removing Express support.
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.
Microsoft simply responded with "it violates the licence, but we're not going to tell you where."
... sweet, sweet poetic justice.
Actually they responded with 5 pages of documents stating exactly the clause.
("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