--- title: "How to get disqualified as an MVP" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2006/10/11/how-to-get-disqualified-as-an-mvp.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2006/10/11/how-to-get-disqualified-as-an-mvp.html" published: "2006-10-11T00:04:57" updated: "2006-10-11T00:04:57" tags: ["Off Topic"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "Jamie Cansdale is not an MVP anymore - his title wasn't renewed this year. \"So what\" you may think. \"Who on earth is Jamie whatever?\". Jamie is the guy that created TestDriven.NET (formerly known as \"NUnit Addin\") - one…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # How to get disqualified as an MVP By Roy Osherove October 11, 2006 In [Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic) **Historical article** · Originally published October 11, 2006; technical details may be outdated. [Jamie Cansdale is not an MVP anymore](http://weblogs.asp.net/nunitaddin/archive/2006/10/10/MVP-Code-of-Conduct.aspx) - his title wasn't renewed this year. "So what" you may think. "Who on earth is Jamie whatever?". Jamie is the guy that created [TestDriven.NET](http://www.testdriven.net/) (formerly known as "NUnit Addin") - one of the most successful free addins in the VS line, that, to my knowledge, has just roughly same amount of people using it daily as those that use NUnit - which is a lot. So why am I writing about this? Because I think someone made a mistake.  Here is the notice Jamie got when his MVP was not renewed: > "Unfortunately your community participation rate over the past year (in any of the communities including VSIP and ASP.Net) is well below the required level. Even if we were to look beyond the _MVP code of conduct_ concerns I don't believe we could justify reinstating you based on participation." There are two parts to this: - Jamie is a community leader, like it or not. His tool drives a big community which his tool enables to exist - those people that want an easy way to run unit tests inside Visual Studio .NET. He is part of that community and writes in his blog about these things. - The "MVP code of conduct"  is a mysterious beast. My best guess as to what that sentence means would be to the fact that in previous versions, Jamie enabled TestDriven.NET to run in **all** versions of VS.NET, including the Express ones (which are free). To be clear, the Express version of VS does not support building plugins for it, so Jamie hacked his way into glory and created something that would actually run in the Express, giving Developers everywhere a chance to run unit tests even if they couldn't afford Visual Studio Professional. Since then he was forced by MS legal to take that ability down, unfortunately. So, I think the main reason Jamie isn't an MVP anymore is because he "hacked"  the express SKU's, and not being active in the community is just a pretty way of not saying that. Legal issues aside, Jamie "fixed" a mistake Microsoft has made - not putting unit tests inside all versions of VS.NET - and for that he deserves much recognition  - an MVP award for community is exactly what it's about - having that passion that also helps other people do what they need with the tools they have. Microsoft could have been more clear and come out and say it out loud: "you're not an MVP because you misused our product and we don't like that". Unit Tests in VS.NET are a big issue. How big? There was a [petition](http://www.peterprovost.org/archive/2004/06/12/1379.aspx) about this a while ago, which Microsoft failed to pay attention to, [It's right here](http://www.peterprovost.org/archive/2004/06/12/1379.aspx). It's written by [Peter Provost](http://www.peterprovost.org/), who's now a Microsoft Employee in the patterns and practices group (written before he joined MS I believe). I think Peter believes in what he wrote today just as much as he did then - maybe he can help push this forward? ## More in Off Topic [All posts in Off Topic](https://osherove.com/blog/category/off-topic) - Oct 18, 2006 ### [Nothing to do with Vista](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/10/18/nothing-to-do-with-vista.html) - Oct 15, 2006 ### [Next generation facial mapping technology](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/10/15/next-generation-facial-mapping-technology.html) - Sep 30, 2006 ### [Top 10 Best Presentations Ever](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/9/30/top-10-best-presentations-ever.html) - Sep 21, 2006 ### [Windows Live - porn related? Google thinks so.](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/9/21/windows-live-porn-related-google-thinks-so.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/