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Visual Studio 2013 Community Edition now available

252 points| numo16 | 11 years ago |visualstudio.com | reply

77 comments

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[+] andyhnj|11 years ago|reply
Speaking as a guy who (currently) only uses Visual Studio at home for recreational programming, and not at the office, I'm pretty happy about this. The Express editions are OK, but it's nice to have access to extensions, like VisualHG for Mercurial integration. (Yeah, I know I should switch to Git, but I really like Hg.)
[+] jszymborski|11 years ago|reply
> (Yeah, I know I should switch to Git, but I really like Hg.)

A bit OT but don't apologise for being more proficient in an unpopular/less accepted tool than most are with a popular/more accepted one.

Tired of people shitting on other folk for not using the "flavour of the month" tool.

Less v. Sass, PHP v. the world ... it's not constructive.

No problem in discussing the pros and cons of one tool over the other, and it's still fine to conclude one has as many pros as the other has cons, but it's not ok to bemoan the use of either.

[+] jdpage|11 years ago|reply
Honestly, Mercurial is just better than Git -- the only reason I switched away from it is because Github. Constantly contemplating switching back.
[+] badthingfactory|11 years ago|reply
Totally agree with @jszymborski. As a developer who is always looking for better ways, sometimes the best tool for the job is the one you already know really well.
[+] grantpalin|11 years ago|reply
I don't get the Git fixation. I know it's popular, possibly in a big way due to GitHub. Yet I'm comfortable using Mercurial and Bitbucket. Probably due to Hg being cross-platform from the beginning, it's more Windows-friendly.
[+] isgood12|11 years ago|reply
Let me disagree with others. As the same version control is used by the entire team in most cases, if Andy is doing any work with others, what others use and prefer (git most likely) would influence what he should try to get proficient at.
[+] pbowyer|11 years ago|reply
"Visual Studio Community 2013 is free for any non-enterprise application development."

What's left out to make it non-enterprise development? Or to put it another way - how are they restricting its usage & preserving sales of Visual Studio?

[+] FreezerburnV|11 years ago|reply
I believe what they mean by "non-enterprise application development" is the slightly later on clarification saying "for teams of up to 5 people" (or less than 5 people, I forget exactly). So likely you will get a free license, which you can use to register up to the max number for community, and if you try anything beyond that it will ask you to buy a license. Or something along that line.

They also mention that Community has the full power of Visual Studio with no features really removed. It's just the licensing for whatever size teams that matters.

[+] bithush|11 years ago|reply
From what I have seen this is essentially Visual Studio Professional with a license restriction for enterprise use. There is, at least was not in the previews I have worked with, no actual limitation built into the software, it is purely a licensing limitation.
[+] userbinator|11 years ago|reply
More precisely, what is "non-enterprise"?

There is also this phrase which is even more vague:

and for teams with more than five people

Per-seat licensing I can understand, but what constitutes a "team"? If I use it to develop an application, I'm not allowed to share the source code with more than 4 others? That doesn't make any sense.

[+] SloopJon|11 years ago|reply
Leave it to Microsoft to complicate licensing.

I've long used the compiler included with the Windows SDK for automated testing of our C API. Since the latest versions of the SDK no longer include a compiler, I'll need to use some edition of Visual C++, for which I had assumed that Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop (say that three times fast) would suffice. If Community replaces Express, I'll no longer have a freely available tool chain to deploy throughout the testing lab.

I guess I'll have to reread the terms of my MSDN subscription to see whether it's kosher for me to install Visual Studio on systems where other people are running my tests, or if they'll need subscriptions too.

[+] epmatsw|11 years ago|reply
If it's just the base edition, it's missing a lot of the more powerful code analysis and testing tools, as well as team management stuff. More than likely though, it's going to be a licensing thing. There's plenty of software out there that has a full-featured non-commercial version that relies on large companies not wanting to get sued to sell commercial licenses.
[+] anoncow|11 years ago|reply
What happens when a desktop equivalent of android becomes the mainstay?

Microsoft makes 25% of it's revenue from Windows. And an equal amount from server and tools(this is where VS belongs). Xbox makes 13% and Bing 4%.

Office makes up 32% of the revenue. If MS can sacrifice a part of the 25% which VS is a part of and retain or perhaps increase the net revenue from other segments ( by attracting developers), then it will be a successful move.

Attracting developers will only be half the game. It will still have to find a way to ship more devices with Windows and for that it will have to make Windows devices and phones primarily an attractive option.

With most consumer computing now occurring on mobile devices, sales of devices with Windows will determine Microsoft's future. The consumer segment will have an effect on the enterprise segment as well. Microsoft will then end up eventually losing all their revenue streams.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/19/microsofts-business-in-thre...

[+] ryanisinallofus|11 years ago|reply
They are betting the farm on Azure and doing what Ballmer had probably been tasked to do for the last 10 years: wait as long as possible before becoming a services company.
[+] dkopi|11 years ago|reply
One can only hope jetbrains will offer a cheaper personal license for Resharper now that it can be used on the community edition as well
[+] alkonaut|11 years ago|reply
From the preview it looks like a lot of the refactorings/tools I use ReSharper for in VS2013 is actually going to be built in when 2015 ships. So Resharper may feel overpriced in a hurry, if many of their users didn't pay an arm for the IDE itself (making the plugin relatively cheap) and if what they are offering suddenly isn't as much as it used to be.
[+] radicalbyte|11 years ago|reply
They would be very smart to do this, because with Roslyn around it won't be long before Visual Studio itself is feature comparable to R#.
[+] felixrieseberg|11 years ago|reply
This is a great time to reiterate that startups receive Microsoft's software for free, obviously including all versions of Visual Studio.

Check out BizSpark.com or get in touch with me if you happen to be a YC company ([email protected]).

(Also, sorry for popping up in all the threads - We have a lot of threads here right now about VS options and I want to make sure that people know that they might be able to get VS Ultimate for free.)

[+] oldspiceman|11 years ago|reply
This is great for anybody who's had the pleasure of using MonoDevelop
[+] teamonkey|11 years ago|reply
I wonder how else it will affect Unity3D development, now that the real .Net stack can work on other platforms.
[+] mark-r|11 years ago|reply
I hope this includes MFC and ATL for C++. I've kept my version 6.0 from 1998 just for that, but it's too painful to use these days.
[+] flyrain|11 years ago|reply
Love Visual Studio. If a Mac/Linux version is provided, that's perfect for me.
[+] Guvante|11 years ago|reply
Visual Studio doesn't run on the .NET runtime entirely and uses WPF. Thus all of the C++ logic and WPF itself would need to be ported for that to happen.
[+] EGreg|11 years ago|reply
Sounds like "the evil empire" of old realized that releasing its platform as Open Source would revitalize its platform.

This is eventually what happens, after the first mover monopolists collect their rent for a decade. I don't mean it in a bad way, just as an observation of repeatable economic trends.

After all, now Microsoft needs more app developers to develop Windows apps and compete on the mobile front.

[+] alkonaut|11 years ago|reply
It's mostly them becoming a service company (Azure) rather than a software company (Windows, Office). The more people that can push code to azure, the more money they will make in the future. So giving people the tools to do that for free makes a lot of sense. Still charging the big money from the enterprises of course, because not doing that would be insane.

The mobile thing is relevant of course, but Azure is where they are betting the farm.

[+] CmonDev|11 years ago|reply
It's more about Open Sourcing the best VM available and making the best IDE available free rather than simply going Open Source. It's a strong move.
[+] tomlane11|11 years ago|reply
Wait wait wait so codelens is not locked to Visual Studio Ultimate anymore? I'm sure that's one of the key questions here?
[+] patja|11 years ago|reply
I installed the new Community Edition this morning and do not see any codelens features...so I guess it is still Ultimate only
[+] thelsdj|11 years ago|reply
So I currently have an VS Pro + MSDN subscription. I need MSDN for running Windows Server VMs (I dev on a Windows Server 2008 VM currently). Is there any cheaper version that gives me Windows licenses for my dev systems now that I don't need to pay for VS Pro?
[+] radicalbyte|11 years ago|reply
Microsoft run a few programs - Action Pack, DreamSpark, BizSpark. If you qualify then you get a lot of software for (fairly) little money.
[+] custardcream|11 years ago|reply
Partner Action Pack + Visual Studio Pro without MSDN is your best bet.

(or visual studio community if you qualify)

[+] giancarlostoro|11 years ago|reply
This is great, now people have Visual Studio as an option for Python development, I have to say... Python Tools for Visual Studio is A+. I honestly prefer it to PyCharm, and I use PyCharm on Linux because I don't get to use VS.
[+] patja|11 years ago|reply
I'm just glad to have access to the option Debug / Attach to process, one of the many very useful little features that were annoyingly omitted from the Express version in the past.
[+] lbelloq|11 years ago|reply
Let's say I'm an independent developer. Can I develop/test/distribute/commercialize my applicatons with this license?
[+] numo16|11 years ago|reply
Yes. From the FAQ:

Q: Who can use Visual Studio Community? A: Here’s how individual developers can use Visual Studio Community: Any individual developer can use Visual Studio Community to create their own free or paid apps.

[+] AlexeyBrin|11 years ago|reply
Really curious if the Community Edition will work with Xamarin.
[+] alkonaut|11 years ago|reply
Should work with the free tier of Xamarin. Afaik, you can download a free VS + Free Xamarin and churn out an iOS+Android app using C# immediately.
[+] bosstuma1997|11 years ago|reply
Can I code web in VS community like html and css?
[+] vivekbernard|11 years ago|reply
Ofcourse Yes. Its basically its a modified version (well most modifications were in the license) of the Visual Studio Professional Edition.
[+] Mauricio_|11 years ago|reply
Using VS professional 2013. Is this better?
[+] tkmcc|11 years ago|reply
From the linked article:

> Q: How does Visual Studio Community 2013 compare to other Visual Studio editions?

> A: Visual Studio Community 2013 includes all the great functionality of Visual Studio Professional 2013, designed and optimized for individual developers, students, open source contributors, and small teams.

[+] arjunnarayan|11 years ago|reply
No. This is a slight downgrade from VS professional 2013. But that's the whole point: that you can now get 95% of the way to VS Pro 2013 at no cost.