Maybe an enhancement of that explanation is in order:

When Alan released Codebook for Visual FoxPro and gave it away for free, he and his company in general took a beating from a select group of the community he was trying to benefit (by giving Codebook away for free).

Markus and EPS, who is in a similar position now as YAG and Flash were back then, is also trying to benefit the community at no cost and once again a select few are beating the crap out of him over trivial issues.

That was a link between YAG and Markus ... similar situations ... similar responses from the *community* ... nothing to do with MS.

Hope this clears up any misconceptions.

CT