5 ms·

Additionally, full-blown Visual Studio is totally free now. Win10 is practically free or totally free (if upgrading from a valid Win8).

omt66 12y ago
Good points. Visual Studio community edition is free for the individual developers. It is a full-featured IDE, same edition like VS Professional. In a non-enterprise organization, up to 5 developers can use the VS, of course after that they will start charging. IMO: Great for startups and indies.
aikah 12y ago
well,still waiting for SQL Server (pro) to follow that trend... I guess I'll wait a long time.
- wvenable 12y ago
  SQL Server Express is pretty useful on it's own. The only limit is the database size be under 10GB. That's a pretty high limit for a lot of applications.
- MichaelGG 12y ago
  Yeah. Even having a proper shared nothing cluster requires the Enterprise Edition, at like $12k a core. Just to get a slick version of what you can do with DRBD for free.
mrpippy 12y ago
> Additionally, full-blown Visual Studio is totally free now. Not exactly. Anyone inside an "enterprise organization" (according to Microsoft's arbitrary definition) is even worse off than before, because Microsoft won't be releasing the Express editions any more. From http://www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-community-vs http://www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-community... 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.
- ctvo 12y ago
  Yes, because those organizations on the MS stack were all running the Express edition and didn't have MSDN licenses, right?
- nightski 12y ago
  If you have > $1M in revenue or > 250 PCs I hope you can afford a $99 VS upgrade license...
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Not exactly. Anyone inside an "enterprise organization" (according to Microsoft's arbitrary definition) is even worse off than before, because Microsoft won't be releasing the Express editions any more. I doubt that there were ever significant numbers of developers in enterprise organizations using Express Editions anyway. If you are doing serious business, the cost of paid licenses (and MSDN subscriptions) is generally justified if you are going to be using MS technologies.

omt66 12y ago

Good points. Visual Studio community edition is free for the individual developers. It is a full-featured IDE, same edition like VS Professional. In a non-enterprise organization, up to 5 developers can use the VS, of course after that they will start charging. IMO: Great for startups and indies.

aikah 12y ago

well,still waiting for SQL Server (pro) to follow that trend... I guess I'll wait a long time.

wvenable 12y ago
SQL Server Express is pretty useful on it's own. The only limit is the database size be under 10GB. That's a pretty high limit for a lot of applications.
MichaelGG 12y ago
Yeah. Even having a proper shared nothing cluster requires the Enterprise Edition, at like $12k a core. Just to get a slick version of what you can do with DRBD for free.

mrpippy 12y ago

> Additionally, full-blown Visual Studio is totally free now. Not exactly. Anyone inside an "enterprise organization" (according to Microsoft's arbitrary definition) is even worse off than before, because Microsoft won't be releasing the Express editions any more. From http://www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-community-vs http://www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-community... 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.

ctvo 12y ago
Yes, because those organizations on the MS stack were all running the Express edition and didn't have MSDN licenses, right?
nightski 12y ago
If you have > $1M in revenue or > 250 PCs I hope you can afford a $99 VS upgrade license...
dragonwriter 12y ago
> Not exactly. Anyone inside an "enterprise organization" (according to Microsoft's arbitrary definition) is even worse off than before, because Microsoft won't be releasing the Express editions any more. I doubt that there were ever significant numbers of developers in enterprise organizations using Express Editions anyway. If you are doing serious business, the cost of paid licenses (and MSDN subscriptions) is generally justified if you are going to be using MS technologies.