Release Pex for 2008 now

Question

Ship it as is. Euan told me to put this here if I love it.

I love it. So will my customers. 

Answer 1

Amen....

Answer 2

I am new here. Please bear with my question:  how about code contract Release and its license?

Answer 3

Hi kdan2000,

You should probably repost your question as a new thread on the forum.

Thanks, Peli

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Jonathan de Halleux

Answer 4

I would like to add how awesome Pex is, and how much I want a commercial release! Do we really need to wait until VS 2010? (if that)

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Damien

Answer 5

Personally, I love Pex. Having unit tests at the micro level together with 100% code coverage is a great thing. At the moment, I do it manually using a combination of MbUnit/Gallio and NCover. Automating it is a great help and a real value. 

But as it appears, Pex for VS 2008 is licensed only under the Microsoft Research License Agreement for Non-Commercial Use Only. So I couldn't use it in real world software development. This will only change for VS 2010, which, in my experience, will not play a vital role in production until the next 2-3 years. So, do I have to wait for this time and tell my customers Well, a tool exists that could save you lots of money, but sadly we're not allowed to use it. ? 

(Background: I'm a software freelancer specialized in establishing and teaching quality and sustainability tools and strategies in .NET software projects (like e.g. unit test frameworks, automated build processes and the like...).) 

Please reconsider this license issue - I cannot see any reason for it anyway. Otherwise there's no point for me (and I'm sure this also applies to many other people) to invest time in something that I cannot use in my profession. I'd greatly regret that!

Regards
Thomas 

Answer 6

Our business won't allow us to use software under the MSR-LA, and I'd very much like to get in Pex as part of our Best Practices for Test Suite Design. So +1 Release Early and Often (with a business friendly license, *cough*BSD*cough*).

Answer 7

Hi there,

I just learned about Pex, read a lot about it and spent the last hours playing with it (it's great!), just to find out that the current license does not allow using it in real-world development (e.g. using VS2008). Please, could you do a commercial release or release Pex under a more business-friendly license? There's really no point for most people to invest time in this if they cannot use it in their daily work!

Answer 8

Hi,

I played around with PEX and find it a great tool. I also showed it at some presentations and I hat a great feebdack on it. But when it came to the question "Can I use this in my project?" people are disappointed when I tell them about the Academic License. And for myself I'd like to get more then just "play around experience" and try how it works with real world projects. But this is currently not allowed by the license.

I would be very happy if you could provide a different license which allows using PEX in commercial projects or allow to purchase it to use it commercially.

Thomas

Answer 9

Yes, please release Pex under a more commercial friendly license.  I started to look into Pex and started to spread the word on my company only to find out today this limitation :-(.
Patricio.

Answer 10

+1 for releasing it for VS2008.

Teams will not be moving for a while to VS2010 and a lot of teams can't utilise Pex under the current license.

This is a real shame as people could benefit from it today (and based on the feedback you receive you can make the VS2010 version even better!!).

So I am sure myself and others would be overjoyed with a change in the license.

Thanks,

John

Answer 11

Hi all,

We just released a new version (0.9.40105.0) that extends the pre-release license to Visual Studio 2008 Team Dev or Team Test. This means that you can use Pex for commercial purposes in VS2008 TeamDev/TeamTest. Note that this is NOT a commitment to RTM the product with support for 2008. As usual, you can dowload this version from our download page at

     http://research.microsoft.com/pex/downloads.aspx

The full release notes are at http://research.microsoft.com/pex/releasenotes.aspx .

Thanks,
The Pex Team.

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Jonathan de Halleux

Answer 12

Jonathan,

Can you briefly address the non-commercial usage concerns that users are having?  I understand that Microsoft would prefer to wait until VS2010, but if we have to wait 1-2 years, the community may as well implement their own version of this system, thereby fragmenting your user community once again (i.e. unit testing frameworks, etc.)

Sincerely,

Giorgio Galante 

Answer 13

Hi Giorgio,

We just released a new version of Pex that allows provides a pre-release license for Visual Studio 2008. In other words, you can use Pex for commercial purposes, as part of the evaluation of the product.

I think that's what you wanted to hear?

Cheers,
Peli

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Jonathan de Halleux

Answer 14

Hi Jonathan,

good to hear that a commercial license is available now. Thanks a lot!

Answer 15

Wahoo!!

Thanks!

Mark

Answer 16

I do want to be very clear about what this means. We have enabled this support to make it easier to evaluate the product, this is NOT a commitment to RTM the product with support for 2008. The platform support will depend on many factors including the feedback from this fourm.

-Euan

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http://blogs.msdn.com/euanga