I received this email today.
tldr; I am not selling my soul.
From: Microsoft Subject: Congratulations on your Microsoft MVP award You’ve been accepted to the Microsoft MVP program Daniel Stenberg, We’re pleased to welcome you to the Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVP) program in recognition of your outstanding contributions to the community in following technical area/s: C++
It was not a total surprise since I was nominated to this program earlier this year and I actually did the necessary steps of manually filling in tedious forms. The program has lofty words about wanting to recognize efforts like mine, but when filling in the form there is no recognition for Open Source or other of my areas of expertise. Since I had to claim at least two areas to advance in the forms, I claimed to be an expert on “C++” and “web”. Those items were basically the only two available options that weren’t plain Microsoft technologies. I at least know about C++ and web. Obviously the program people did not think I qualified for “web”.
In the form I only listed and referred to my Open Source work to back up my claims. I am of course not at all an expert in C++, but I do know my way around C. I suspect the people over there don’t care about the difference.
My take on this is that they accepted me in the category that was closest to what I primarily work with, and that my protocol work is probably not the “web” they think of.
What good will this do me?
I honestly have no idea and I don’t have any expectations. I don’t think it can do me much harm anyway.
I figure ideally it can get me more contacts and reach to people that has knowledge about things that can help me in my Open Source work – in particular with Windows related queries and problems.
I don’t feel special or unique as this an “award” given to thousands of people, and in little Sweden alone there are like a hundred people awarded. It does not seem to be a particular high bar to be welcomed into this club.