Who is Jason Weber? | The Coffeehouse

Cairo
I want my waffle sundae, give me my carbs!

Has there been a video of him on here? He's having a spat with Jamie Cansdale.

Cairo
I want my waffle sundae, give me my carbs!

Ahhh:
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=311787

This doesn't ring true:

The reason we’re able to offer Express for free and even let developers build commercial applications with Express is because we limit 3rd party extensibility of Express, specifically by removing support macros, add-ins, and VSIP packages.

So stop distributing Express. Or give away the full product.

Piss or get off the pot.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

Cairo wrote:
Ahhh:
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=311787

This doesn't ring true:

The reason we’re able to offer Express for free and even let developers build commercial applications with Express is because we limit 3rd party extensibility of Express, specifically by removing support macros, add-ins, and VSIP packages.

So stop distributing Express. Or give away the full product.

Piss or get off the pot.

This is another Jason vs. Jamie thread, so I'll kick it off.

Dan's argument, I feel, is null.

First off, Microsoft doesn't really limit the extensibility of Express because Microsoft needs to extend Express themselves (XNA, Popfly, etc), and yet they won't explain why they're unavailable for those of us with beefier IDEs).

Secondly, EULAs, whilst legally binding, can (and usually do) contain numerous dubious statements, prohibiting certain activity. Whilst an EULA can do this, their clauses can be shot down in court. For instance, you cannot prevent someone from reverse-engineering your product or making comparisons and benchmarks.

Oh, and Microsoft's claims of copyright infringement? They sound like a last-ditch effort to scare Jamie away in lieu of any real illicit activity on his part.

Actually, I think that case with Network Associates sets a precedent. I wonder if Jamie's lawyer will use that in his defence (assuming it goes to court).

Myself? I've never been fond of anything with the words "Microsoft" and "Express" in the names. The PMs (which there are far too many of, IMO) can blog all they want about making it more accessible to hobbyists and students, the cynical rest of us, recognise them as coy marketing tools. Students get Visual Studio Professional under Academic Licensing or MSDNAA, and hobbyists are going to warez it. I'm not denying many people have used VSE, but I doubt many of them are into actual development (I read something about 80% of VSE users not doing any real dev work with them).

But never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetance. I believe that this isn't a big deal and that there's just some asinine internal policy that needs to be followed through.

Anyway, the 6th June deadline is today, let's see what happens in 12 hours time when Jamie's ultimatum runs out. I'll grab the popcorn.

anand.t

W3bbo wrote:

and yet they won't explain why they're unavailable for those of us with beefier IDEs).

Express is available for commercial and personal use. They dont want commercial customers to get the free express and the free/cheap addins available, that would make it equivalent to their other higher version commercial products. I donno why this is hard for jamie to understand Perplexed

AndyC

W3bbo wrote:

(I read something about 80% of VSE users not doing any real dev work with them).

That is, by definition, the hobbyist market.

wkempf

My initial reaction was that Microsoft was severely in the wrong, if not legally, than at least (I won't use the word morally) in a PR way. However, after carefully reading what Jamie posted, I had a different take. Jason was cooperative and cordial through out the correspondance, and was quite correct about the license violation. And I understand and agree with the license. If you don't, then don't use it. Simple enough.

Now more evidence has come forward, and it looks like Jamie is actually abusing the community. http://www.infoq.com/news/2007/06/TestDriven-Express-Emails

Not a simple topic, but I definately don't think Jamie deserves defending here, even if you dislike Microsoft, the EULA or anything else.

Rossj

wkempf wrote:

Now more evidence has come forward, and it looks like Jamie is actually abusing the community. http://www.infoq.com/news/2007/06/TestDriven-Express-Emails

Abusing the community? The 'evidence' on that site was provided by Jamie and is also available on his site. How is Jamie abusing the community? He doesn't think he is in breach of the EULA and is sticking up for himself.

Jamie wrote:
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.

wkempf

1. His commercial product includes the same license clause(s) that he thinks are wrong in the Microsoft license.

2. He didn't disclose the e-mails in which he tried to leverage "perks" out of Microsoft in exchange for removing the Express versions.

He's using publicity to push his product. It's wrong, regardless of whether or not Microsoft is in the wrong or not (and for full disclosure, I don't think Microsoft is, at least legally).

Lloyd_Humph
If Blackberrys are addictive cellphones, Channel9 is the ultimate addictive website.

AndyC wrote:

W3bbo wrote:

(I read something about 80% of VSE users not doing any real dev work with them).

That is, by definition, the hobbyist market.

If they're really going to go for it as in, developing a product, they can afford the full shabang. Plus VS has better templates and many more features > Which is why I bought it (mainly) - and its truly awesome in full. It just somehow feels better.

Use VSE for a week, then VS2005, then go back. You just... can't.

AndyC

Lloyd_Humph wrote:

If they're really going to go for it as in, developing a product, they can afford the full shabang. Plus VS has better templates and many more features > Which is why I bought it (mainly) - and its truly awesome in full. It just somehow feels better.

The minute you say "product" you are already moving out of the world of Express. There are people out there who just want to give it a go. People who'll play for a few hours, get bored and give up. People who might never go beyond a few simple tools to do things they want to do or make a simple website for a club. People who, quite frankly, would've probably been content if QBasic still shipped with Windows.

These people shouldn't have to spend a small fortune on VS. They really don't need unit testing (no matter how good an idea it is), they don't want to learn Pro tools. All they want is something simple they can try stuff out on and see if they like it.

Sure, there are some people using Express who would like all the pro features, they just don't want to pay the pro price - but that doesn't automatically mean they should get it.

W3bbo
The Master of Baiters

AndyC wrote:
Sure, there are some people using Express who would like all the pro features, they just don't want to pay the pro price - but that doesn't automatically mean they should get it.

It doesn't mean people can't meet said demand either. Microsoft's VSE EULA overstepped its bounds, methinks.

AndyC

W3bbo wrote:

It doesn't mean people can't meet said demand either. Microsoft's VSE EULA overstepped its bounds, methinks.