Microsoft threatens one of its own MVPs?

If your one of the many developers who use Microsoft's Visual Studio IDE, you probably have experience or at least are aware that Microsoft as a company is usually pretty good at supporting their third party developers with useful tools such as the Visual Studio Express Editions. The Visual Studio Express Editions (link here) are cut down versions of the Visual Studio 2005 development environment, which are meant to encourage hobbyist and students to develop for applications for their Windows environment. Today's story revolves around this concept and how Microsoft will risk its image with its third party developer community. The Register has a post up about a fellow Microsoft developer named Jamie Cansdale who developed the a third party plug-in for Visual Studio called TestDriven.NET which is a plug-in that allows users to setup and perform unit test within the IDE itself. Cansdale who is also recognized as one of Microsoft's MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals), which is like an award classification for exceptional developers in the community who contribute a good amount of their expertise to the Windows developer community. This is a big deal since the MVP's are the closest things to Window application guru's you can get without being on the staff of Microsoft.

So this all sounds good right? You've got big company supporting its development community with powerful development applications both commercial and free. Along with that you have a powerful development community that is also recognized with the company, you'd figure that Microsoft wouldn't want to mess with the good thing they've got going for it right? Well apparently not, big M, has apparently threatened legal action against Cansdale for his TestDriven.NET plug-in because it supports the express editions of Visual Studio (i.e. the free version). The reason Microsoft gave according to the Register, Microsoft is claiming (actually its some executive that apparently has too much time on his hands) that Cansdale's plug-in is in violation of the Visual Studio Express Edition's EULA, since it must have used undocumented API calls... or something to that extent (see the Register post for more details). Thus Microsoft is threatening legal action against Cansdale, check Cansdale developer blog for the most update details.

So you get the the gist of the story right?If not, here is the run down, big company develops product, encourages community to develop for their platform, the community does and their was much rejoicing. Until big company realizes that someone in that community that they recognize as a significant contributor releases a plug-in for one of their development products. All is still good plug-ins are fine, but wait why does is support our free tools? Big company can't have plug-ins extend their free software can they? Think of the loss in sales! Lets strong arm the developer into not supporting our free version of the software by threatening to sue.

So now that we're on the same page, here comes the rant.

First off kudos to you Cansdale, you've created something that the community can use, as I understand it even use to be free. I hope you still continue to support the development community you've long been apart of.

Alright now for the rant. Microsoft holds dominance in the computer industry for two main reasons one their tight with the OEM's which guarantee Windows (whatever version) will circulate in mass numbers (this will happen over time for Vista) and the second reason being that they've got one of the the largest (if not the largest) group of professional developers writing software for their system that everyone else uses. If you start messing with any of those core points your only asking for trouble. This incident won't be enough to stop your community from developing but if you continue down this path of upsetting your community, your company will fall like a ton of bricks. In the mean time you've done nothing to affect your bottom line, TestDriven.NET is a plug-in that your software supports. Don't like it? Don't support plug-ins! If all of this hasn't sunk in yet, here is the bottom line, you've angered at least one of your developers (an MVP at that!!) , tarnished your image some in the face of an important community, and you haven't even made/saved any money from it, so what was the point?