Providing Timely Responses

If Peter had started this petition three years ago (for something else of course) I wonder if anyone at Microsoft would have listened.  If they did I'm not sure what the response might have been.  I'm pretty sure that the responses wouldn't have been as timely and that customers wouldn't have been invited to a late night impromptu round table discussion about the features in question.  In this case I think that Peter and Microsoft will have to agree to disagree, but I'm thankfully for the VSTS PMs taking the time to explain our side in a timely fashion and I hope the explanations help everyone see the why behind our actions. Dana had a lot to say after seeing it in person, but here are my favorite bits. 

“The history of Microsoft dev tools is riddled with folk lore about how Microsoft rarely communicates with developers until it is way too late. Peter Provost's petition is an example of how developers push back in an effort to get Microsoft to listen when they seem to fall out of line. I had a refreshing experience at the geek dinner that shows that is not always the case. First off, Jason and Tom came out in RESPONSE of those concerns and to provide rebuttal on Microsoft's view to us. More importantly though was that in an effort to hear our thoughts in the community on this, they came to listen to our customer feedback on Team System. I really appreciated that. No one told them to come to the dinner. No one asked them to give their perspective in such a forum. They just did it.”

“It is definitely possible to separate out parts of the unit testing, but unless you see the bigger picture, you won't realize that what Microsoft is offering is actually much more, and is WORTH the investment in moving to the higher skews for Team System anyways.”