Couple of months back, Microsoft released a new free SKU for Visual Studio 2013 called the Community Edition.
Unlike the earlier Express editions which were massively stripped down versions, Community Edition is equivalent to the commercial grade Visual Studio 2013 Professional in terms of features and is free for individual use both even for commercial development.
Small businesses that require less than 5 licenses can also use it for commercial purpose. Larger enterprises can use it for only for training or for development/testing of open source projects.
http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-community-vs
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.
For more information, please refer to theVisual Studio Community 2013 License Termsand theVisual Studio Licensing Whitepaper.
Q: How does Visual Studio Community 2013 compare to other Visual Studio editions?
A: Visual Studio Community 2013 includes all the great functionality of Visual Studio Professional 2013, designed and optimized for individual developers, students, open source contributors, and small teams.
Unlike the earlier Express editions which were massively stripped down versions, Community Edition is equivalent to the commercial grade Visual Studio 2013 Professional in terms of features and is free for individual use both even for commercial development.
Small businesses that require less than 5 licenses can also use it for commercial purpose. Larger enterprises can use it for only for training or for development/testing of open source projects.
http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-community-vs
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.
For more information, please refer to theVisual Studio Community 2013 License Termsand theVisual Studio Licensing Whitepaper.
Q: How does Visual Studio Community 2013 compare to other Visual Studio editions?
A: Visual Studio Community 2013 includes all the great functionality of Visual Studio Professional 2013, designed and optimized for individual developers, students, open source contributors, and small teams.
