Now you've gone and made Eric Ligman upset.

Ligman is the global partner experience lead for Microsoft Worldwide Partner Group, and the one who wrote an Oct. 27 posting on the Microsoft SMB Community Blog about people using Windows 7 upgrade discs to install the entire operating system on a blank hard drive.

Such a move, Ligman impressed upon his audience at the time, was illegal. "When these posts and write-ups state that you can install clean from an Upgrade piece of software and they fail to mention that you need to own a qualifying software license to be legal to use the Upgrade software for installation," he explained, "they give the impression that because it is technically possible, it is legal to do so."

Under Microsoft's EULA (End User License Agreement), though, a user must already have a "qualifying full license" attached to a previous version of Windows in order to (legally) upgrade.

Ligman referred to this illegal upgrading as a "hack," which evidently raised a wee bit of ire among a faction of Windows users, who decided en masse to comment on Ligman's blog post. Ligman then fired off another epic blog posting in response, dissecting those comments into two lines of thought:

"1. It appears 'conspiracy-theorism (yes, I know theorism is not in the dictionary) is very present.

2. There appears to be a lot of reading through 'pre-determined conclusion' lenses."

[Italics mine]

Apparently, a number of those comments suggested that Microsoft isn't interested in helping its customers, or partners, make their operating systems work. Ligman groups those commenters under "conspiracy theorists," and counters with the obvious: "I can assure you with 100% certainty that Microsoft is absolutely committed to working to improve the satisfaction and experience of all of our customers and Partners."

Ligman spends more time countering the commenters whom he views as viewing the situation through those "pre-determined conclusion lenses," starting off with:

"It seems very apparent that many people commenting on my post, either directly on it or on any of the articles about it, figured they knew what it said even before reading it and/or did not completely read it before drawing their final conclusions or making their comments."

I feel your pain, Ligman. Seriously, I do.

After suggesting that any number of commenters declined to parse his words carefully ("I flat out stated that if you own the right licenses, you can do the clean install, without calling out any procedure that can/cannot be used"), Ligman insists that his use of the word "hack" was not leveled at any one individual, but at the illegal-upgrading process itself:

"The 'hack' I am specifically calling out in my post isn't a 'who,' it's a 'what.' A 'what,' you ask? Yes, a 'what.' Take a look at the definition of 'hack' in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. (I know, because I did before my original post to ensure the wording I was using was accurate).

"'Hack - a usually creative solution to a computer hardware or programming problem or limitation.'"

[Italics, again, are mine]

That 3,000-word posting aside, I feel there are some very specific takeaways from the whole situation:

1. Microsoft continues to view upgrading to Windows 7 without a "qualifying full license" as illegal. Never mind that the sheer amount of full XP and Vista licenses already in circulation, on top of the massive numbers of consumers who will be purchasing Windows 7 preinstalled, means that the upgrade "hack" will likely not prove a huge issue for Microsoft.

2. Everyone involved needs to hug it out.