Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Trouble in MVP World

The Microsoft MVP program is a recognition award for leadership in the Microsoft-platform user community.  I'm not a Microsoft MVP, but many of my friends are.  Some things happened during the last round of awards (beginning of October) that make me question the intention and/or value of the program.

First, they awarded, and then rescinded the MVP status for Cyril Paciullo, the maker of Messenger Plus, a free addon for MSN Messenger that is also a distribution vehicle for LOP (nasty adware program).

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/100606-micro...

Next, they didn't renew the award for Jamie Cansdale.  Jamie wrote TestDriven.NET, which is probably one of the most widely used addins for Visual Studio by unit testing advocates everywhere.  The reason cited: Jamie violated the "MVP Code of Conduct" because he happened to make his program work with the Express SKUs (Visual C# Express, Visual Basic.NET Express, etc).   Or, at least this is the speculation of what the violation was.

http://weblogs.asp.net/nunitaddin/archive/2006/10/...

How to get disqualified as an MVP