Can Visual Studio Express be used for commercial purposes?

Question

Can Visual Studio Express be used to develop apps that are sold, or to develop web sites for which there is a charge to develop or use?

 

A section from the Terms of Use for Visual Studio Express 2008 is shown below:

PERSONAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE LIMITATION.

Unless otherwise specified, the Services are for your personal and non-commercial use. You may not modify, copy, distribute, transmit, display, perform, reproduce, publish, license, create derivative works from, transfer, or sell any information, software, products or services obtained from the Services.

 

From this it seems that the answer is no.  However, I have read other posts that seem to indicate otherwise.  If you take the second sentence of the section very literally, how could one legally build an application or web site using Visual Studio Express? (In order to run the application you need to copy or publish it some where.)  Perhaps the answer depends on what "obtained from the Services" means.  Is a program or web app developed in the Visual Studio Express environment obtained from the Services?  Or does "obtained from the Services" refer to actvities targeted at Visual Studio Express itself, such as repackaging, extending functionality of Visual Studio Express, or providing information describing how to use Visual Studio Express?

 

One post indicated it was ok for a company to used Visual Studio Express as long as it was not used to develop applications or services for sale, which to me seems contradictary to the Terms of Use section given above because the applications or services would be used by the company, which logically sounds like commercial use to me.  (Or does commercial use only refer to selling?)

 

Another post indicates that the End User License Agreement (EULA) for the programming environments of  Visual Studio Express -- C#, Web Developer, etc. -- is the same as for Visual Studio, except that some functionality (such as developing for mobile devices) has been expressly disabled.  Since a Visual Studio EULA must allow for development of commercial applications or web sites, it would seem that a Visual Studio Express EULA would also allow for commercial use. 

 

I am wondering it the Terms of Use of Visual Studio Express over-ride the Visual Studio Epress EULA's regarding commercial use.

 

In summary, I doubt one can develop anything in Visual Studio Express and legally sell it, but I am not sure.  Also can a company legally use Visual Studio as long as it does not sell any product or service developed using Visual Studio Express?

 

 

Answer 1

Hi BobS,

According to FAQ 7 of Visual Studio Express official web site.

 Can I use Express Editions for commercial use?

Yes, there are no licensing restrictions for applications built using Visual Studio Express Editions.  

Therefore, you can use it for commercial use.

For more information, please check the URL below.

http://www.microsoft.com/express/support/faq/default.aspx

Regards,

Xun

 

Answer 2

As I understand the quoted section, you are not allowed to sell or redistribute Visual Studio x Express Edition itself, any modifications you made to it, or any derivatives or libraries that ships with it. It doesn't sound to me like the section refers to solutions created with it. I would imagine that a website created with Visual Web Developer would be described the same way as a spreadsheet or document created in the free edition of MS Office, i.e. you can do with it what you want because it's your (intellectual) property. I might be wrong, but that's my interpretation.

Answer 3

Hello everyone.

Links are not longer available, could you please provide us new ones?

I have to probe development in Express editions is not involving licensing cost.

Thank you :)

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Ivan Dario Ospina C#.NET, T-SQL Developer