As you know, the RC for Visual Studio 2017 is out for some time.
But I have trouble finding some answers to some questions I have. I work for a big company, here in Romania as a programmer. And my job is to code all kind of internal tools, used only here in the company in .NET, Visual Basic.
Right now I have VS 2010 Professional. And because I want to use the best of the Visual Studio, I was wondering if I can use this RC build. I can't buy this, because it is not final. So:
- I talked to people from my company responsible with licensing and software acquirement. But they don't know about this situation with the RC build... and they are not even interested to find details.
- Then I went to Microsoft Romania. They haven't heard that a new VS edition was launched. They gave me a number to call, in Germany.
- I called Microsoft Germany, but I talked with an Indian that was telling me to buy the 2017 edition, and I was telling him that this is not final so it doesn't have a price.
Of course, Microsoft wont tell me that I can use freely their software or all benefits that I have, so I am asking some questions. Maybe some of you faced this problem before:
- Can I use this version of RC at my company? What happens when this edition will be final? Do I have to buy the final one , or I can stay with the RC build (and with all the bugs that comes with)?
- If not, can I use another version, freely, but newer than 2010?
- Do I need a commercial license for the internal tools I use? I don't sell the code to anybody, it is used only internally. Do I still need a commercial license?
Thank you!
P.S. If this question does not fit here, please guide me where to post it and get a proper answer.
As far as licensing is involved, it seems that you can use the prerelease version, but it comes with no guarantee of support. Whether your organization will allow it is up to them, especially as there is risk.
From the Release Notes, it says:
So, for example, in the current RC, you would not be able to use .NET Core in production, since it is marked as "Preview".
In the license agreement, it also doesn't say you can't use it, but it does have limitations (emphasis added):