I have just received another courier delivered letter from Microsoft's lawyers. That makes a total of 3 letters in 4 working days! I can see how these things can get expensive very quickly.

I'd like to highlight a couple of things in the letter.

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 Webersaid:

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.

I'm not sure where on my website this was suggested. It's possible that they're referring  to one of the comments on the last post. They do however bring up an interesting point. The license attached to their first letter was the one for "Visual Studio 2005 Standard and Academic Editions". It didn't matter that the license wasn't the Express SKU license because the wording is the same. What if it turns out that the reason I can't add buttons to Express SKU also applies to Visual Studio 2005? I would then be forced to take down TestDriven.NET entirely. What if it also means I can't use PopFly Explorer for Visual Studio Express? :-(

Filed under: Blogging, Microsoft

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(InfoWorld) - Google and Salesforce.com will announce a partnership on Tuesday, a source close to the company in Europe said Thursday.

Salesforce.com has scheduled an online news conference on Tuesday at 11 a.m. GMT at which Lindsey Armstrong, co-president of the company's operations in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region, will make a "strategic announcement." The source said it is safe enough to assume that the announcement concerns Google.

In the U.S., Salesforce.com has said that it will make an announcement with "a leading Internet company based in the Bay Area" first thing on Tuesday. A Salesforce.com U.S. spokesman reached on Thursday declined to comment on the identity of the Internet company.

The Wall Street Journal reported on May 21 that Google and Salesforce.com were holding talks over a possible alliance that could see the two companies bundle Web-based applications. Both vendors declined to comment on the report.

Google and Salesforce.com have each been rapidly expanding the online services they offer.

Google has dramatically widened its scope from being a leading Internet search engine to encompass an ever-increasing range of other online services including desktop applications. Eight-year-old Salesforce.com has its roots as a hosted provider of CRM (customer relationship management), but has its sights set on becoming a platforms vendor using its AppExchange Web site, which it is in the process of fully commercializing as an online software marketplace.

"We're a catalyst for change," Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com CEO, told financial analysts earlier this month. "Google, Amazon.com, eBay, and Yahoo inspire us. We want to duplicate what they do in the consumer world." He added that to his mind Salesforce.com was effectively "building an on-demand operating system." Benioff positioned Salesforce.com as still very much focused on growth. "We're just trying to get to a billion dollars in on-demand [software] before anyone else does," he said. "We're willing to do anything."

At the same time, Microsoft, a prime competitor of Google in the search and Internet advertising arenas, is marshalling its own set of Windows Live online services, including a hosted version of its Dynamics CRM software.

The Journal report suggested that Google and Salesforce.com need to buddy up to take on Microsoft and avoid competing with each other.

Teaming up could involve integrating Google's Apps suite with Salesforce.com's hosted CRM. The two companies have previously worked together around Google's Search Appliance and AdWords. There's also the possibility that the relationship might become much closer with Google potentially looking to acquire Salesforce.com at some point.

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(InfoWorld) - Dell inaugurated Thursday a new research and development (R&D) facility in Bangalore, India, that can house up to 1,000 staff. The new facility is in line with Dell's plans to make India a hub for the development of enterprise products such as servers, storage, and software.

Dell already has 600 engineers working in Bangalore on systems software, hardware design, and validation and testing for its enterprise products. The Bangalore facility is the company's largest R&D center outside the U.S. for enterprise products, Brad Anderson, senior vice president of Dell's business product group, said Thursday.

Other Dell R&D centers in Asia are in Shanghai, Taipei, and Singapore. While the Shanghai center focuses on desktop design, the Taipei center does notebook design, and the center in Singapore works on Dell's printing and imaging products.

Starting with software development in 2001, Dell has set up groups in Bangalore specialized in systems software, hardware design, and testing. The aim is to do end-to-end product development in India, said Vivek Mansingh, country manager and head of the R&D center. A dual-socket server is currently being designed entirely from India.

Dell did not however disclose when the 1,000 staff would arrive at its new 200,000 square feet facility. The company has so far invested $150 million in setting up its R&D operations in India.

Besides its R&D operations, Dell also runs call centers from various locations in India to support its customers worldwide. Its manufacturing plant in Chennai in south India is scheduled to start production in July.