It looks like size of your client is important.
From Visual Studio 2013 and MSDN Licensing Whitepaper - November-2014 page 10:
"Example 2: A Fortune 500 firm has outsourced the development of its store-locator mobile application to a small agency. The application is not an open source project. The agency has 5 employees working on the project and would like to use Visual Studio Community 2013. Since the agency is a contractor developing this application for the Fortune 500 firm, and since the application is not an open source project, the agency cannot use Visual Studio Community 2013 for developing and testing the application. "
So your small team can't develop customized app for big company. Don't know what about boxed apps. Don't know what about "individual".
I've done some more research and it looks like small teams can sell apps build with VS2013Comm. There are no restrictions in EULA who can buy it. I guess the key words are sell and outsource. When you sell, it's still your app. While outsourcing, usually app isn't yours but clients. That's my story and I'm stickin to it. Let me know if you think I'm wrong.
Answer from user156471 on Stack ExchangeVideos
It looks like size of your client is important.
From Visual Studio 2013 and MSDN Licensing Whitepaper - November-2014 page 10:
"Example 2: A Fortune 500 firm has outsourced the development of its store-locator mobile application to a small agency. The application is not an open source project. The agency has 5 employees working on the project and would like to use Visual Studio Community 2013. Since the agency is a contractor developing this application for the Fortune 500 firm, and since the application is not an open source project, the agency cannot use Visual Studio Community 2013 for developing and testing the application. "
So your small team can't develop customized app for big company. Don't know what about boxed apps. Don't know what about "individual".
I've done some more research and it looks like small teams can sell apps build with VS2013Comm. There are no restrictions in EULA who can buy it. I guess the key words are sell and outsource. When you sell, it's still your app. While outsourcing, usually app isn't yours but clients. That's my story and I'm stickin to it. Let me know if you think I'm wrong.
Clause (a): "... working on your own applications ..." The example cited by Dudley is a situation where the small agency is creating what's known as a "work for hire" -- the work in question will belong to the Fortune 500 firm. Normally it is not the small agency's "own application". The agency cannot, for example, sell it or give it away on street corners or open-source it -- because the created work belongs to the Fortune 500 firm. Note that this would still be true if the company outsourcing the work to the small agency was a small company. US law is clear in these situations: works which normally would be the property of their creator(s) are the property of the outsourcing firm. The size of the outsourcing firm is not the controlling factor. It is the nature of the outsourcing relationship. (The same ownership rules prevail when you agree to do development work for a firm as a temporary contractor.)
In order for the small agency to claim the work as its own -- and therefore be able to argue that clause (a) applies -- it should have a provision in its contractual agreement with the firm that specifies the small agency retains ownership of the software and other intellectual property it creates during the engagement. It can also include a provision that grants the firm an unrestricted, perpetual right to use the software for its internal operations and/or make it available for use by its customers as a mobile store-locator.
Be aware that most firms will not readily agree to leave ownership of the intellectual property with the developer, and most other developers competing for the business will not ask for such terms.
There are 2 major differences.
- Technical
- Licensing
Technical, there are 3 major differences:
First and foremost, Community doesn't have TFS support.
You'll just have to use git (arguable whether this constitutes a disadvantage or whether this actually is a good thing).
Note: This is what MS wrote. Actually, you can check-in&out with TFS as normal, if you have a TFS server in the network. You just cannot use Visual Studio as TFS SERVER.
Second, VS Community is severely limited in its testing capability.
Only unit tests. No Performance tests, no load tests, no performance profiling.
Third, VS Community's ability to create Virtual Environments has been severely cut.
On the other hand, syntax highlighting, IntelliSense, Step-Through debugging, GoTo-Definition, Git-Integration and Build/Publish are really all the features I need, and I guess that applies to a lot of developers.
For all other things, there are tools that do the same job faster, better and cheaper.
If you, like me, anyway use git, do unit testing with NUnit, and use Java-Tools to do Load-Testing on Linux plus TeamCity for CI, VS Community is more than sufficient, technically speaking.
Licensing:
A) If you're an individual developer (no enterprise, no organization), no difference (AFAIK), you can use CommunityEdition like you'd use the paid edition (as long as you don't do subcontracting)
B) You can use CommunityEdition freely for OpenSource (OSI) projects
C) If you're an educational insitution, you can use CommunityEdition freely (for education/classroom use)
D) If you're an enterprise with 250 PCs or users or more than one million US dollars in revenue (including subsidiaries), you are NOT ALLOWED to use CommunityEdition.
E) If you're not an enterprise as defined above, and don't do OSI or education, but are an "enterprise"/organization, with 5 or less concurrent (VS) developers, you can use VS Community freely (but only if you're the owner of the software and sell it, not if you're a subcontractor creating software for a larger enterprise, software which in the end the enterprise will own), otherwise you need a paid edition.
The above does not consitute legal advice.
See also:
https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/262916/understanding-visual-studio-community-edition-license
Check the following: https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/compare/ Visual studio community is free version for students and other academics, individual developers, open-source projects, and small non-enterprise teams (see "Usage" section at bottom of linked page). While VSUltimate is for companies. You also get more things with paid versions!
Hi, @Shaheen Ratnani
Welcome to Microsoft Q&A!
You can use the community version of Visual Studio to develop and test your programs.
According to this document, you belong to an organization but not an enterprise, and you meet the requirements of this part:
If none of the above apply, and you are also not an enterprise (defined below), then up to 5 of your individual users can use the software concurrently to develop and test your applications.
You can use MFC components in both the community edition and the professional edition. You can check the Visual Studio Community component directory document.
*
Update:
As long as your company does not meet the enterprise definition, and no more than five people use Visual Studio.you can sell your software.
This is the definition of enterprise:
(a) More than 250 PCs or users.
(b) Annual income is USD 1 million (or equivalent in other currencies).
Sincerely,
Peng
*
If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and upvote it.
Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread
Maybe you're looking for the EULA.
https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/license-terms/
--please don't forget to upvote and Accept as answer if the reply is helpful--
The Terms and Conditions of Microsoft are very clear on the topic.
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.
https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/community/
However another clause seems to come into effect with you.
Any individual developer can use Visual Studio Community to create their own free or paid apps.
https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/community/
In both cases, it would seem you qualify to use Visual Studio Community edition however you see fit.
It depends on a couple of factors.
The license itself is reasonable clear on the topic from https://www.visualstudio.com/vs/community/,
Any individual developer can use Visual Studio Community to create their own free or paid apps.
However, it may also depend on the size of the company wanting to buy your software. From the VS 2015 Community whitepaper,
Example 2: A Fortune 500 firm has outsourced the development of its store-locator mobile application to a small agency. The application is not an open source project. The agency has 5 employees working on the project and would like to use Visual Studio Community 2015. Since the agency is a contractor developing this application for the Fortune 500 firm, and since the application is not an open source project, the agency cannot use Visual Studio Community 2015 for developing and testing the application.
In other words, the restrictions on organizations may apply to you, even if you're a sole developer. Microsoft defines an organization as such,
In enterprise organizations (meaning those with >250 PCs or > $1M in annual revenue) no use is permitted for employees as well as contractors beyond the open source, academic research and classroom learning environment scenarios described above.
I'd follow those guidelines based on numbers from your potential buyer to see if you need a license.
The license terms for Visual Studio Community edition has usage restrictions, for example that it should be used for open-source development and should not be used by enterprise employees.
I want to know how Microsoft actually enforces this? I know there are other restrictions that limit CE's usefulness in an enterprise, like team size. But specifically regarding the open-source part, how do they know how propetary and non-public enterprise code is developed? How do they know I am using CE or professional?
Sign in and the 30 day trial will go away!
"And if you're already signed in, sign out then sign in again." –b1nary.atr0phy
To bypass "30days left must go online to sign-in", sign-in once to Microsoft account, you'll get %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\VSCommon\OnlineLicensing folder that you can copy to offline PCs.