I run a small startup company ( 13 people inclusive of my partner ) with 7.NET developers including me and I have 3 Visual Studio professional licenses, can I download and use Visual Studio Community edition for the remaining 4 developers? The reason I ask this is because, I have been doing this for the last 2 years now. My work involves making small websites for overseas and local companies, my annual turnover is less than 1 million USD and I have around 18 PCS in all, some guys purportedly from M.S are insisting that we can't use community version for commercial development and that if we do so, revenue generated from the same needs to be shared with Microsoft. These guys who claim to be from M.S ( I suspect that they are Microsoft authorized re-sellers) and are harassing me and threatening me with legal action, I would like to know if what they say is indeed true because purchasing 4 licenses immediately is pretty expensive for me. I read the T&A and it does mention that Organizations which are not enterprises can use the Community edition if they are not an Enterprise for like 5 concurrent users. I should mention that I am in India.

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I have done my due diligence and have read the licensing agreements below for both products and there doesn't seem to anything that forbids small businesses from using these products make commercial products like websites etc.Keep in mind that we are not re-distributing any of the actual components, we just use Visual Studio as an IDE and we could very well move to some other free software like SharpDevelop. Turbo Cracked. They have further informed me that I can't use Visual Studio Express for developing applications and selling them as that goes against Microsoft licensing laws, they are asking me to submit to a SAM audit, I don't trust these guys because they are also asking me to buy software that I don't need like Office 2016 and MSDN subscription for each employee in my office etc and loads of other stuff like SQL Server Standard edition etc. EDIT: I have made up my mind and am going to buy the Visual Studio Professional Licenses because it looks like, short of a reply from the M.S legal team, nothing will actually suffice here.

EDIT2: I found out that I am not alone, this is a pretty big scam in India and this guy who is not related or affiliated to me in anyway describes it pretty well. Not being a License expert either, I would say this company are trying to pull a fast one on you.

Why would you suddenly need to buy extra software like SQL Server. If you needed it you would already have it. Office 2016 as well - hey you could be a Google house and only use their apps and not need Office 2016 at all.

All sounds very dodgy - but do carefully read Community License Docs & T+Cs as some do prohibit Commercial use - but as you have read these thoroughly you seem to be believing yourself more and just want someone to agree with you. As Eugor said, it would not hurt to contact MS yourself or a reputable company and discuss with them first - normally on the 'we are planning to have this many users using this software what are my options/costs/restrictions', don't declare at the out set what you are using as they may also start trying to sell you stuff you don't need. PS - Welcome to Spiceworks.

Text 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. Edit: My mistake. Concurrent usage for up to 5 users is fine. Now that i read it properly.

SAM audits are voluntary (you are allowed to refuse them) and it really does seem like this company is playing fast and loose with the rules. Are they based in India too? I ask as a few Asian companies that do this licensing work for Microsoft were less than reputable. Hadn't heard of any Indian companies doing this though.

Edited Sep 6, 2017 at 3:56 UTC. Mike400 wrote: Short answer - no.

Long answer - you have too many developers using VS to use the Community Edition. Those guys claiming you would owe Microsoft a share of the profits, payable through them, are attempting to scam/extort you. Mike, why has he too many devs for the community edition? The licensing bit does say clearly (once I read it properly) that he can have up to 5 users using the Community Edition concurrently. It makes no mention of the number of devs employed only that the company must not be classified as an enterprise. M Boyle wrote: Mike400 wrote: Short answer - no. Long answer - you have too many developers using VS to use the Community Edition.

Those guys claiming you would owe Microsoft a share of the profits, payable through them, are attempting to scam/extort you. Mike, why has he too many devs for the community edition?

The licensing bit does say clearly (once I read it properly) that he can have up to 5 users using the Community Edition concurrently. It makes no mention of the number of devs employed only that the company must not be classified as an enterprise. That's what I assumed too.

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 advise.