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Question
Thursday, August 3, 2017 9:02 AM
The license for Visual Studio 2017 is free for open source or small teams (< 250 people in the company). However, the license for this package(Build Tools) doesn't mention anything about free / commercial use
My question is more about if I do not have a licence for VS2017. Can I still use the standalone build tools for commerical projects but only to test environment on VMs not on Desktops ?
Best regards,
Pawel
All replies (5)
Thursday, August 3, 2017 1:19 PM | 3 votes
Hi,
1) Build Tools 2017 License Terms
"You and others in your organization may use these items on your build machines solely for the purpose of compiling, building, verifying and archiving your applications or running quality or performance tests as part of the build process."
but according to Andrew Pardoe [MSFT], Build Tools 2017 is a "suplement" to Visual Studio and requires the same licensing: if you can use VS 2017 Community, you can use Build Tools 2017 for free. Otherwise you need a valid paid license:
Suplement for Visual Studio 2017:
https://www.visualstudio.com/license-terms/mlt553512/
2) If furthermore you are using TFS Build Services (either from a TFS server or from Visual Studio Team Services) to build with Build Tools on your build server, you need a valid TFS license:
Visual-Studio-2017-Licensing-Whitepaper-March-2017.pdf
"Connecting Visual Studio Team Services to a Local Build Server
It is possible to set up your Visual Studio Team Services account to run builds on a local server running Team Foundation Build Services. The licensing requirements for the server running the Build server are no different whether it is receiving commands from a local Team Foundation Server or from Visual Studio Team Services—at a minimum it requires a Team Foundation Server license, an operating system license (plus potentially CALs), and all users whose actions cause builds to run require Team Foundation Server CALs. Therefore, users who check in code to Visual Studio Team Services which in turn kicks off a build to the local Build server need Team Foundation Server CALs. A Team Foundation Server CAL is provided for each paid Visual Studio Team Services user."
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My portal and blog about VSX: http://www.visualstudioextensibility.com; Twitter: https://twitter.com/VSExtensibility; MZ-Tools productivity extension for Visual Studio: https://www.mztools.com
Thursday, August 3, 2017 1:59 PM
Another question
We have 25 licenses for VS_community 2017, we want to use Build-Tools on ours VMs . My question ist , Can i use it on any VMs(more than 25) in my Clusters to Release, Tests, Builds etc. or I must use only on my Desktops where VS_comminity installed is.
Thursday, August 3, 2017 4:20 PM
You can use them on build servers, not just on desktops.
No need to have VS 2017 Community installed on build servers.
The intention of Microsoft is that Build Tools 2017 is equivalent to Visual Studio 2017 in terms of licensing:
- If you are entitled to use VS 2017 Community in your (non-enterprise) organization, you can install it or Build Tools 2017 wherever you want.
- If you are not entitled to use VS 2017 Community in your (enterprise) organization, you can install:
- VS 2017 Professional
- VS 2017 Enterprise
- Build Tools 2017
wherever you want, but each installation of those three kinds of editions must be a paid license.
My portal and blog about VSX: http://www.visualstudioextensibility.com; Twitter: https://twitter.com/VSExtensibility; MZ-Tools productivity extension for Visual Studio: https://www.mztools.com
Friday, August 4, 2017 6:46 AM
Hi Pawel,
Welcome to the MSDN forum.
Please have a look at the following information that comes from Introducing the Visual Studio Build Tools
Andrew Pardoe [MSFT]: The build tools are a supplement to VS and thus require a valid VS license. But VS Community is free for most. See the downloads page for details: https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/
As my understanding, if you meet requirements to freely use the VS community 2017, since the build tool is a supplement of it, you can also use the build tool with free, like Carlos said, no need to install the full VS community 2017 version.
BTW, please check the usage of VS community 2017 as below and confirm you meet them:
For individuals: Any individual developer can use Visual Studio Community to create their own free or paid apps.
For 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 five 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.
Best regards,
Sara
MSDN Community Support Please remember to click "Mark as Answer" the responses that resolved your issue, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if not. This can be beneficial to other community members reading this thread. If you have any compliments or complaints to MSDN Support, feel free to contact [email protected]
Wednesday, August 9, 2017 8:49 AM
Hi Pawel,
Sorry to trouble you and I just want to confirm that your issue is solved or not? If not, please feel free to let us know.
BTW, if you think Carlos's replies are helpful for you, please mark it as answer and I will close this thread, that will also help other community members who have the same or similar license issue to easier search this information, thank you for your cooperation.
Best regards,
Sara
MSDN Community Support Please remember to click "Mark as Answer" the responses that resolved your issue, and to click "Unmark as Answer" if not. This can be beneficial to other community members reading this thread. If you have any compliments or complaints to MSDN Support, feel free to contact [email protected]