Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language

Re:Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language by gmueckl on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @12:07PM (#24482899)

That is not quite true in the case of Visual Studio. There is a community edition, but it is only free under a very constrained set of circumstances (mostly company revenue < 100.000$/year, IIRC). Most business need to buy Visual Studio Professional to legally use that IDE.

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Re:Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language by otterlicious on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @01:25PM (#24483955)

The compilers can be downloaded for free by anyone as part of the Build Tools for Visual Studio.

These restrictions only apply to the Visual Studio IDE.

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Re:Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language by qayxc on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @12:54PM (#24483479)

From the horses mouth [1]:

> Any individual developer can use Visual Studio Community to create their own free or paid apps.

No revenue cap to be found. Also:

> In non-enterprise organizations, up to five users can use Visual Studio Community.

Again - no revenue cap. And finally:

> enterprise organizations (meaning those with >250 PCs or >$1 Million US Dollars in annual revenue)

Now call be a naive buffoon, but in my book, >$1M annual revenue and/or >250 IT workplaces means that licensing costs for software are not a problem at all. This restriction also only applies to commercial use - academic, OSS, and classroom environments are still allowed.

I really don't see how this is constricting in any way.

Edit: [1] https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/ (under "Usage")

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Re:Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language by gmueckl on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @01:57PM (#24484387)

I got the revenue limit wrong, but it doesn't change the fact that the Community edition isn't free for everybody. It has strings attached. That was my point.

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Re:Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language by qayxc on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @02:48PM (#24485133)

It doesn't have strings attached that concern users - that was my point. It's also not just "getting the revenue limit wrong" if said limit doesn't even apply to individuals and small companies.

As soon as a commercial organisation enters 250+ IT workplaces and >$1M annual revenue, license management becomes relevant in any case and isn't exactly "strings attached"-territory. Feel free to disagree, but I still think your argument is pretty weak.

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Re:Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language by thechao on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @12:54PM (#24483491)

If I could buy visual studio ultimate/pro/... for my Mac, I’d do so. I miss it sorely.

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Re:Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language by Narishma on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @12:13PM (#24482977)

How is that enforced?

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Re:Statement Regarding the Zen Programming Language by the-dude on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @12:53PM (#24483464)

Meet the BSA : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSA_(The_Software_Alliance)

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