I think that critics are based on politics and protocol and moral procedures, it's not actually connected to the real acchievement of Patchou, and as a consequence should not be actually taken into account here.
They should also take into account that the software is still free and it offers one of the greatest features involving IM. MSN without it, simply sucks. Once you get to know MP, you just can't live without it.
Security specialists can complain and they may have some point, but Patchou worked for so many years and he and the millions of users worldwide know how hard his efforts were to continue developing it and keep it for free. Without a sponsor, there wouldn't exist a MP.
Other addons take more than a year to upgrade to a new version and even to evolve in such a beautiful way MP has. I don't think critics took this into account and I think they should.
Anyway, having the MVP or not, that just doesn't change the acchievement at all. MP doesn't really need MVP to be what it is and to continue evolving. I'm sure Patchou must be frustrated and kind of pissed because of this situation but hey, Microsoft doesn't give you the key to heaven, no one needs that MVP shit. It's nice, but that's all. Patchou does not need it at all, he won't gain more popularity or profit from it, because he has us, his loyal followers
And nothing's gonna change that.
The sponsor is the only think that keeps this addon free for everyone worldwide. Let's just suppose the sponsor was taken out from it. Would he still be worth the MVP? If the answer is YES, then criticism is useless because it would clearly show that the software is worth the honor.
In the end, let's just suppose that Microsoft pushes Patchou to make his software free from adware or sponsors but, should also be discarded from the freeware software list; which irrevocably means we would have a shareware software or even an "activation-ware" software, like >=Office11 or Windows itself.
Now this would be a new situation where Patchou could wonder what's for the better, to have a non-freeware software which specialists declare worth the MVP or to have a adware/freeware ready to the community composed by countless users.
What has more weight here? I think the answer is clear.
PS. And besides, this is more serious:
"Microsoft has had an ugly week on the anti-spyware front. On Thursday, it was revealed that new antipiracy measures in Vista and Longhorn will disable Windows Defender, the portion of the operating system designed to block viruses and other malware, if the company cannot verify that the operating system installation is legitimately licensed."
What do analysts and security specialists have to say about it?
