I just activate my visual studio 2017 license today (I've got one license from MSDN)
And I wanna know if I can share the license key with friends like a VL (volume license) or no ?
Thank in advance
No. Your MSDN subscription licenses you (and only you) to use Visual Studio (emphasis mine)
Visual Studio subscriptions (formerly called MSDN subscriptions) are licensed on a per-user basis. One person can use the software to design, develop, test, or demonstrate his or her programs on any number of devices.
Source
However, there is Visual Studio Community Edition that lone developers are entitled to use. Companies that have 5 or less developers can also make use of this edition without breaching the EULA.
For Individuals
Any individual developer can use Visual Studio Community to create their own free or paid apps.
For organizations
An unlimited number of users within an organization can use Visual Studio Community for the following scenarios: in a classroom learning environment, for academic research, or for contributing to open source projects.
For all other usage scenarios:
In non-enterprise organizations, up to five users can use Visual Studio Community. In enterprise organizations (meaning those with >250 PCs or >$1 Million US Dollars in annual revenue), no use is permitted beyond the open source, academic research, and classroom learning environment scenarios described above.
Related
Is Visual Studio Community edition able to use my repositories on the Visual Studio Online account?
I have been paying $50 monthly for Visual Studio Online Professional which is included in the Online account, but now I'm really wondering do I still need to pay that. I have few projects on the Online account which I can't give up, but I understand the included Pro is pretty much same as the Community edition. So why am I really paying it anymore? Do I lose my online projects or something if I stop paying?
Let me see if I can help out here with sorting out some details. There's a few things to understand about the Visual Studio IDE and access to a Visual Studio Online account. Let's start with some basics:
Each Visual Studio Online account allows up to five users access to the basic capabilities of Visual Studio Online. Essentially, you only pay for Visual Studio Online Basic per-user fees once you have reached your sixth person. The Visual Studio Online Basic user plan doesn't provide any access to a specific IDE so you "bring your own IDE" whether it's Visual Studio, Eclipse, Xcode, etc.
Visual Studio Online Professional includes the basic capabilities of Visual Studio Online as well as access to the Visual Studio Professional IDE on a monthly rental.
Visual Studio Community has a EULA that has some restrictions on how you are able to use it currently essentially has the same set of capabilities as Visual Studio Professional with some minor differences. Most notably, if you are an enterprise building commercial applications, you aren't able to use Visual Studio Community. There's more details available here and here.
Therefore, in your case, if you meet the conditions of the Visual Studio Community edition's EULA, then you should be good to go with using Visual Studio Community and one of your free Visual Studio Online basic licenses.
I would say no, you don't lose anything. The free account still has all the benefits your Pro account does, just without the VS Pro access: http://www.visualstudio.com/pricing/visual-studio-online-pricing-vs
VS Pro usually runs around $750, so if you're keeping it for 2 years it makes sense to buy it outright. If you don't need the advanced features of Pro, the community edition will work just fine.
Are there any disadvantage when creating a commercial software in a Visual Studio Ultimate trial version? Can you please point out some effects of a trial version in case I create a simple software from it. Thanks
Well the biggest disadvantage is that if you want to actually distribute the software you have created using the trial version then you are breaking the EULA. Other than that, no, it has the same capabilities as the full version of VS Ultimate.
If you are looking to purchase a version of Visual Studio, you might want to look into getting a cheaper version like VS Professional (US$800 vs US$3800!).
Or if you are just having a play around, why not try one of the Express versions: http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/express.
From Microsoft site:
"Customers can evaluate Visual Studio 2010 editions free for 90 days. After 30 days, customers must register trials of Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, Premium, and Professional to obtain a free key which extends the trial an additional 60 days."
So there is no drawback other than you can't support anything you created with a nonfunctional software after 90 days (and breaking the license as link664 pointed out). If you're doing commercially software you should consider buying a license. For start ups there are programs like BizSpark which make the investments lower. If you do not want to pay anything look for an alternative. There is SharpDevelop out there.
My university has several programs available for download. About 6 months ago I downloaded visual studio 2010 ultimate edition. I am not sure if it is the trial version. I don't think so because I've been using it for about 6 months and I have not had to extend any trial. Moreover, I don't get the splash screen that says for evaluation purposes only. I used to have that screen on a trial of visual studio profesional edition that I had in my previos computer. If I dont have a trial version that means I can distribute my applications?
In Help > About Microsoft Visual Studio you can see licensing information. Mine says that it is licensed to me (yay!) and yours should say something similar.
I am not sure about volume licensing, because ours has been bought through an Open Value contract and we have MSDN accounts for every developer, so you have to download your own product key from the MSDN site. Perhaps there are versions of 2010 which do not require you to enter a product key in a different volume licensing contract, but I am not aware of those.
Really though, if you are on a student edition you are not supposed to use it for commercial applications. Just be safe and buy a copy if you are going to distribute your applications (especially commercially).
For those students out there, as a point of interest, Microsoft offers a lot of free software on dreamspark.com (Visual studio 2010 Professional included) in which you should have no problems distributing your own applications - You just need a .edu email.
Regardless of whether Visual Studio is prompting you to purchase a full version, you've obtained your copy via your university. Your best bet is to ask someone in your university's IT department.
You also probably signed an agreement as part of your enrolment which would clarify this.
I'm not quite sure how the Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate licensing works.
How many developers can use Visual Studio in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate?
Is it a single user product? or for as many developers as required?
See buying here :
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/subscriptions/buy.aspx
Per developer (usually named). There is also volume licensing if you have a lot of dev heads
When you buy the Ultimate license, if you don't have some sort of corporate subscription, the price you see on the site is a per-developer cost.
Ultimate is expensive. My advice would be to look over what it gives you versus what your team needs and decide from there. Depending on the work you're doing, Professional may be enough (I don't typically advise going lower).
This is a single user product. There's a separate page for volume licensing: http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/default.aspx
Here is a whitepaper that describes more about the licensing process of Visual Studio, published in September of 2010:
From the link:
This white paper provides an overview of the Visual Studio 2010 product line, including MSDN subscriptions, and the licensing requirements for those products in common deployment scenarios.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=2b1504e6-0bf1-46da-be0e-85cc792c6b9d&displaylang=en
I currently have Visual Studio 2008 Developer Edition. I wish to renew this and get the 3 year SA. However the cost is crazy (around 6-7K USD). The only things that I require above and beyond what Visual Studio Professional Edition used to have are access to TFS (Team Foundation Server) and the ability to create and run Test projects (especially the ability to generate the stubs for unit testing private methods).
Therefore is it true that Visual Studio Professional plus a separate purchase of a TFS CAL will do exactly this for me?
Yes, those two will fill your technical requirements but I'm no licensing expert so I'm not going to say that its all you'll need from a licensing perspective.
In case you haven't seen there’s a document which describes the features of all the different SKUs at Visual Studio 2008 Product Comparison Guide
UPDATE:
There's a paper about licensing at Visual Studio Team System 2008 Licensing White Paper
Visual Studio professional does not contain the full suite of automated Testing tools provided in Team Suite editions so you can't really do TDD (if that's your aim) without additional tools.
You can however create and run Test Projects so they are at last available if you can find an alternative test generation tool or are working with a solution with tests already in it.
If you are an ISV (independent solution vendor) you might look at the BizSpark program. If you qualify software licensing becomes a great deal simpler for the next three years. ($300)
Hope that helps,
Dan
BizSpark