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by gmueckl 2108 days ago
That is not quite true in the case of Visual Studio. There is a community edition, but it is only free under a very constrained set of circumstances (mostly company revenue < 100.000$/year, IIRC). Most business need to buy Visual Studio Professional to legally use that IDE.
4 comments
otterlicious 2108 days ago
The compilers can be downloaded for free by anyone as part of the Build Tools for Visual Studio.

These restrictions only apply to the Visual Studio IDE.

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qayxc 2108 days ago
From the horses mouth [1]:

> Any individual developer can use Visual Studio Community to create their own free or paid apps.

No revenue cap to be found. Also:

> In non-enterprise organizations, up to five users can use Visual Studio Community.

Again - no revenue cap. And finally:

> enterprise organizations (meaning those with >250 PCs or >$1 Million US Dollars in annual revenue)

Now call be a naive buffoon, but in my book, >$1M annual revenue and/or >250 IT workplaces means that licensing costs for software are not a problem at all. This restriction also only applies to commercial use - academic, OSS, and classroom environments are still allowed.

I really don't see how this is constricting in any way.

Edit: [1] https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/ (under "Usage")

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gmueckl 2108 days ago
I got the revenue limit wrong, but it doesn't change the fact that the Community edition isn't free for everybody. It has strings attached. That was my point.
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qayxc 2108 days ago
It doesn't have strings attached that concern users - that was my point. It's also not just "getting the revenue limit wrong" if said limit doesn't even apply to individuals and small companies.

As soon as a commercial organisation enters 250+ IT workplaces and >$1M annual revenue, license management becomes relevant in any case and isn't exactly "strings attached"-territory. Feel free to disagree, but I still think your argument is pretty weak.

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thechao 2108 days ago
If I could buy visual studio ultimate/pro/... for my Mac, I’d do so. I miss it sorely.
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Narishma 2108 days ago
How is that enforced?
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the-dude 2108 days ago
Meet the BSA : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSA_(The_Software_Alliance)
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