June 2007 Archives

Jamie Cansdale, developer of TestDriven.NET is currently embroiled in what could be the start of a legal fight with Microsoft, regarding him having extended Microsofts Visual Studio Express products.

Admittedly the EULA (which are allegedly on shaky ground legally anyway, not just Microsofts, but everyones) is a bit vague and just states "thou shalt not work round technical limitations in the software", but given that Microsoft have disabled the Add-In model in the Express editions and Jamie had to use a "hack" to get his product to integrate, surely he must realise that he's violating the "spirit" of the Express editions, if not the EULA to the letter. His hack involved using another extensibility point that's intended for use by things that are not Add-Ins but that cannot be removed as it's an integral part of the development environment.

The question I'd love to see him answer is "by loading into the Express products the way you did, when the standard extensibility points had clearly been disabled, how did you think that this wasn't against the spirit of the product?". That question he's never answered. Ever.

I can quite happily do everying I need to do, Unit Test wise, without using his product, although it would make life easier and I wouldn't object to the price-tag. However, I won't.