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