EULA Query

Question

The EULA contains the line,

You may not test the software in a live operating environment unless Microsoft permits you to do so under another agreement.

This seems to suggest that Microsoft forbids using Casablanca in production code. While this is discouraged in the FAQ, it does not say that it is explicitly forbidden by the license. Could I get some clarification on this? The URI parsing library is useful and preferable to the overly-verbose WinHTTP equivalents.

Cheers,

Andrew.

Answer 1

Casablanca is an unsupported release and future versions of the code will change enough to break your code if you take it into your production systems today. Our upcoming code refresh will have a few breaking changes, for example (with some synchronous interfaces going asynch, among other things). 

As a DevLabs release, Casablanca has not gone through the rigorous QA processes that Microsoft normally applies to the software we put out there. The code is provided "AS IS." While we pride ourselves on putting out good code even in such prototypes, there may be bugs in it that negatively affects your business, and Microsoft will not be in a position to support you or your organization to mitigate such problems: we may not be able to re-create the exact build that you are using, or have the resources to help address issues even if we can reproduce it.

This reality is represented in the EULA's prohibition of using Casablanca in production code.

Hopefully, this helps clarify the intent of the license. We have received enough positive feedback on our release that we are currently on a path that takes us to releasing this library under an Apache OSS license, but we are not ready to announce a date or officially commit to it.

Niklas