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.
Here’s how Visual Studio Community can be used in 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 5 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.
The 250 users / $1 million revenue thing is a bit weird. Any tech company with more than 10 employees probably has upwards of $1 million/year in revenue. The salary bill alone will be pushing that quite quickly. There seems to be a huge disparity between 250 PCs and $1 million annual revenue. If you had 250 PCs with less than $1 million annual revenue you'd be paying each employee less than $4000 a year.
It's not clear to me how this applies to agencies/development shops. Say small agency (< 10 developers) writing apps for their clients, some of which are enterprises.
A lot of people seem to think that steps like this are just Microsoft catching up. Which, I suppose, they are. But there's something else here too - this kind of thing, where Microsoft is opening up to the open source community, releasing more free tools, releasing more open source projects, all started happening when Satya Nadella took the reins.
I think what we're looking at is a CEO that gets it and is trying to move as fast as possible to turn the monolithic company around. That's no mean feat, considering how long Microsoft has gone with everything being behind closed doors in a licensing maze.
This movement with Microsoft has been going on long before Satya took over the reins. I'd say Scott Guthrie probably seeded this goal to become more open (-source) around 2007/8. It's taken a while to achieve because...lawyers.
Staya Nadella might be accelerating things, but Microsoft has been moving through this direction before Staya's arrival (ASP.NET MVC was open sourced in April 2009), actually I see Staya Nadella taking reins as another step Microsoft took to be more open.
The SDXC card format specifies exFAT as a mandatory feature - a proprietary, patent-encumbered filesystem from Microsoft. This makes it very difficult to legally support these SD cards in Open Source operating systems.
When they stop pulling crap like that, maybe I'll believe in the "new Microsoft".
I've been using VS 2013 Community for a few days now, for C#/MVC work. I can't see the difference in relation to the paid version. All the features I habitually make use of are available. A very nice surprise.
This is a surprising move, won't it result in a large drop in their MSDN subscriber base?
I may be wrong here, but as far as I can tell, the only reason to maintain an MSDN subscription for the purposes of Visual Studio (assuming you're eligible to use Visual Studio Community 2013) is if you want the features in editions beyond Professional, you want to be on the bleeding edge, or you want the peripheral perks of subscribing.
Personally I think it's a fantastic decision, I'm just surprised Microsoft is actually doing it. Hopefully they will be timely in releasing a Community edition for future versions of Visual Studio.
Also, this move is pretty great for startups. I think it also puts BizSpark in a better position. Most early stage startups will no longer have to jump through hoops trying to get into BizSpark, nor prematurely start the clock ticking on that until they're ready.
One of my major peeves with BizSpark has been the requirement that your company's public-facing site be more than just a "Coming Soon" page. While I can see the reasoning, it's kind of annoying when you haven't launched yet, you'd prefer to focus on your product, and you want to make said site using Visual Studio anyways.
The main value of an MSDN subscription is all the subscriber downloads and the Azure credits you get.
Want to try out or develop against any piece of MS software, just download it from the MSDN portal and off you go. Want to test out provisioning with Azure or fire up a server to test or dev against, just use your Azure credits. You can happily run a couple of small servers with the Azure credits.
If you just want Visual Studio you could always buy it on its own for much less than a subscription.
"Most early stage startups will no longer have to jump through hoops trying to get into BizSpark, nor prematurely start the clock ticking on that until they're ready.
One of my major peeves with BizSpark has been the requirement that your company's public-facing site be more than just a "Coming Soon" page. "
I found BizSpark's barrier to entry, practically zero. I applied online and got accepted within hours. I just graduated last month. I never got bothered by Microsoft during the whole membership and exiting was pain free. My experience with the program has been wholly different than yours.
My guess is that they will soon introduce Xamarin into the MSDN subscription plans. Hook developers with the free tools, and then sell the cross-platform, mobile capabilities of Xamarin as an upgrade. There is already a 20% discount for MSDN premium and ultimate subscribers.
Should msvc be the go-to compiler on Windows for C++? I was getting back into the language and was quickly reminded of all the compiler and dependency hazzle, especially when coding for several operating systems. On top of that some older solutions aren't even a good idea anymore, like the whole mingw vs mingw-w64 crap.
Seems to me that from a precompiled binary and build management perspective it's just the easiest way to use whatever is best supported on each platform. Which seems to be clang on MacOS, gcc/clang on Linux and msvc on Windows.
I had to use chromiumembeddedframework in one project and compiling it with gcc or clang on Windows isn't even a choice. Even if there is a way to get it to work, it's a huge project that takes quite a lot of resources to build. Even if it was easy, prebuild is still a lot faster.
With the newest version always beeing free and tools like CMake beeing able to generate projects the only downside I can see is that msvc would dictate the features I'm able to use.
In my previous experiences with VS Express the installed version took about 10GBs of disk space and included plenty of stuff I didn't want or cared about, like various versions of MS SQL Server, support for VB, different runtimes for .NET, etc.
Anyone knows if there's a way to avoid that? I'd like to have "just an IDE", for node and web development.
> Anyone knows if there's a way to avoid that? I'd like to have "just an IDE", for node and web development.
Sorry to reply on a tangent, but for that sort of development I feel compelled to chip in and recommend WebStorm. It's not free, but ships with a boatload of features that are perfect for NodeJS/WebDev. Like a reverse-debugger that you can use on your serverside as well as front-end code. A real time-saver.
Every single edition of VS I have ever tried(and I worked with every one beginning with 6 all the way to 2012) had an option to uncheck SQL Server during installation. Granted, I have not worked with the Express editions,but I don't see why it would be any different.
Visual Studio express comes in different editions, so it's unlikely that Visual C# Express installed Visual BASIC, as that was what Visual BASIC Express is. And running the Express for Web 2013 installer says it will use less than 1GB of disk space.
What that out of the way, within five seconds of clicking the link here it computed 7GB of disk space. It did not provide options to ignore subcomponents like the full VS 2013/4.
My experience is that the MS tools stuff installs and uninstalls cleanly -- and what little it leaves behind are some system components that I'd prefer to have updated and left around anyway. If this freaks you out then that's what VMs are for.
There are checkboxes to not install SQL, MFC libraries and friends. It makes it a 9GB vs. 10GB install, according to its stated amount, I didn't check actual usage.
Welcome to the Mickysoft BloatWorld. And do not forget to get the new 700+ MB Update, so you can live up to even more bloat - this update alone flatulated 5+ GB on the harddrives I have seen.
This is not just about "style" or "personal preference", it is a serious problem: it eats too much energy and therefore destroys the planet, millions of old but perfectly usable devices are transformed into highly dangerous toxic waste because Windows 8x is too slow for them and - most important - we loose a whole generation of brains as too many young developers grow up in the perception that this kind of bloat is acceptable, what is a real catastrophe for the whole industry - it is so hard to find people that can program without crutches and really know what they are doing.
We should more actively avoid this bloat and support better alternatives.
Yes, Mickysoft jobs pay the bills for many, but this happened because we tolerated this too long and alternatives were too weak. Nowadays it is possible to replace all the legacy MS waste that still exists in many companies with better solutions.
I have often wondered why Microsoft wouldn't just release all versions of VS for free. VS is arguably the go-to tool for developing on the other paid Microsoft products (SQL Server, Azure), so it makes sense that this would attract MORE people to those paid offerings..
The new version is extensible, so you can get access to the over 5,100 extensions in the Visual Studio ecosystem.[1]
It’s basically a full version of Visual Studio with no restrictions, except that you can’t use it in an enterprise setting and for teams with more than five people (you can, however, use it for any other kind of commercial and non-commercial project).
It's Visual Studio Professional with a different license. Previously you'd have paid through the nose for Visual Studio Pro, now it's free (subject to license conditions).
I haven't realized hackernews makes comments even harder to read once they get enough downvotes. Thanks for writing the lowest rated comment I've seen so far :D
[+] [-] Ecio78|11 years ago|reply
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.
Here’s how Visual Studio Community can be used in 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 5 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.
[+] [-] ethomson|11 years ago|reply
(Disclaimer: Microsoft employee.)
[+] [-] Rapzid|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leoedin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blueatlas|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _pmf_|11 years ago|reply
That's very sloppily worded. Is it 5 concurrent users? May 5 people create a product and 4 others (after delivery) maintain it?
[+] [-] sergiotapia|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bovermyer|11 years ago|reply
I think what we're looking at is a CEO that gets it and is trying to move as fast as possible to turn the monolithic company around. That's no mean feat, considering how long Microsoft has gone with everything being behind closed doors in a licensing maze.
I for one approve of this trend.
[+] [-] teh_klev|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elboru|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phaemon|11 years ago|reply
When they stop pulling crap like that, maybe I'll believe in the "new Microsoft".
[+] [-] m3sh|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tempodox|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atlantic|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aquadrop|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rl3|11 years ago|reply
I may be wrong here, but as far as I can tell, the only reason to maintain an MSDN subscription for the purposes of Visual Studio (assuming you're eligible to use Visual Studio Community 2013) is if you want the features in editions beyond Professional, you want to be on the bleeding edge, or you want the peripheral perks of subscribing.
Personally I think it's a fantastic decision, I'm just surprised Microsoft is actually doing it. Hopefully they will be timely in releasing a Community edition for future versions of Visual Studio.
Also, this move is pretty great for startups. I think it also puts BizSpark in a better position. Most early stage startups will no longer have to jump through hoops trying to get into BizSpark, nor prematurely start the clock ticking on that until they're ready.
One of my major peeves with BizSpark has been the requirement that your company's public-facing site be more than just a "Coming Soon" page. While I can see the reasoning, it's kind of annoying when you haven't launched yet, you'd prefer to focus on your product, and you want to make said site using Visual Studio anyways.
[+] [-] sequence7|11 years ago|reply
Want to try out or develop against any piece of MS software, just download it from the MSDN portal and off you go. Want to test out provisioning with Azure or fire up a server to test or dev against, just use your Azure credits. You can happily run a couple of small servers with the Azure credits.
If you just want Visual Studio you could always buy it on its own for much less than a subscription.
[+] [-] gregd|11 years ago|reply
One of my major peeves with BizSpark has been the requirement that your company's public-facing site be more than just a "Coming Soon" page. "
I found BizSpark's barrier to entry, practically zero. I applied online and got accepted within hours. I just graduated last month. I never got bothered by Microsoft during the whole membership and exiting was pain free. My experience with the program has been wholly different than yours.
[+] [-] keithg|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taspeotis|11 years ago|reply
So if they lost us to the community edition they'd lose $0. (And probably end up saving money, since no Azure developer credits.)
[+] [-] ElongatedTowel|11 years ago|reply
Seems to me that from a precompiled binary and build management perspective it's just the easiest way to use whatever is best supported on each platform. Which seems to be clang on MacOS, gcc/clang on Linux and msvc on Windows.
I had to use chromiumembeddedframework in one project and compiling it with gcc or clang on Windows isn't even a choice. Even if there is a way to get it to work, it's a huge project that takes quite a lot of resources to build. Even if it was easy, prebuild is still a lot faster.
With the newest version always beeing free and tools like CMake beeing able to generate projects the only downside I can see is that msvc would dictate the features I'm able to use.
[+] [-] drapper|11 years ago|reply
Anyone knows if there's a way to avoid that? I'd like to have "just an IDE", for node and web development.
[+] [-] timrichard|11 years ago|reply
Sorry to reply on a tangent, but for that sort of development I feel compelled to chip in and recommend WebStorm. It's not free, but ships with a boatload of features that are perfect for NodeJS/WebDev. Like a reverse-debugger that you can use on your serverside as well as front-end code. A real time-saver.
http://blog.jetbrains.com/webstorm/2014/04/spy-js-webstorm-s...
[+] [-] gambiting|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tacos|11 years ago|reply
What that out of the way, within five seconds of clicking the link here it computed 7GB of disk space. It did not provide options to ignore subcomponents like the full VS 2013/4.
My experience is that the MS tools stuff installs and uninstalls cleanly -- and what little it leaves behind are some system components that I'd prefer to have updated and left around anyway. If this freaks you out then that's what VMs are for.
[+] [-] tegeek|11 years ago|reply
http://i.stack.imgur.com/Evju1.png
[+] [-] obsurveyor|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stoolpigeon|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toni|11 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.nodeclipse.org/
[+] [-] BloatControl|11 years ago|reply
This is not just about "style" or "personal preference", it is a serious problem: it eats too much energy and therefore destroys the planet, millions of old but perfectly usable devices are transformed into highly dangerous toxic waste because Windows 8x is too slow for them and - most important - we loose a whole generation of brains as too many young developers grow up in the perception that this kind of bloat is acceptable, what is a real catastrophe for the whole industry - it is so hard to find people that can program without crutches and really know what they are doing.
We should more actively avoid this bloat and support better alternatives.
Yes, Mickysoft jobs pay the bills for many, but this happened because we tolerated this too long and alternatives were too weak. Nowadays it is possible to replace all the legacy MS waste that still exists in many companies with better solutions.
[+] [-] numo16|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gregd|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] melling|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pherocity_|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guardian5x|11 years ago|reply
It’s basically a full version of Visual Studio with no restrictions, except that you can’t use it in an enterprise setting and for teams with more than five people (you can, however, use it for any other kind of commercial and non-commercial project).
[1] https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/
[+] [-] pjmlp|11 years ago|reply
- DirectX debugging tools, including GPGPU
- Parallel code debugging
- MFC and ATL for those that still need to support such type of applications
- 64 bit compilers
- DDK integration
- Sharepoint integration
[+] [-] teh_klev|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] rootlocus|11 years ago|reply