Microsoft are thieving bastards

Say you developed a nice way of making objects visible to people learning how to program. And the software you developed was free....

And then one day, Microsoft copied the idea and incorporated it into their Visual Studio product.

Well, like any reasonable person who writes free software, you could applaud their taking that idea.

But fast forward a few months... How would you feel if Microsoft went and patented your idea claiming it as their own. You would be reasonably fell somewhat unhappy.

Guess what? That's exactly what Microsoft have done with Blue/J. Read the gory details here.

Update: StevePa tells me in the comments that the application has been withdrawn and there's an investigation ongoing into why this happened. Which is good.