That's not correct. You don't have to give your credit card details or even be logged in but you are still required to have any Visual Studio license. For hobbyists and startups the VS Community license is enough but larger companies need a VS Professional license even for the VS Build Tools.
How strict Microsoft is with enforcement of this license is another story.
You do not need a Professional or Enterprise license to use the Visual Studio Build Tools:
> Previously, if the application you were developing was not OSS, installing VSBT was permitted only if you had a valid Visual Studio license (e.g., Visual Studio Community or higher).
That just confirms the parent comment's point. If you're just using the build tools directly, you're fine. If need to develop "with Visual Studio" i.e. the IDE, not just the command line tools, then you need the paid license.
Well, let's say this is the world view of all companies about open-source software. Then what happens. If people "tend to not give crap" about licenses, all the nice guarantees of GPL etc also disappear.
GPL was made in response to restrictive commercial licensing. Yes is uses the same legal document (a license): but is made in response!
So is propriety seizes to exist, then it's not a problem GPL also seizes to exist.
Also: it's quite obvious to me that IP-law nowadays too much. It may have been a good idea at first, but now it's a monster (and people seem to die because of it: Aaron Swartz and Suchir Balaji come to mind).
There are zero guarantees and commercial software uses GPLd software as parts of their products all the time. Licenses do not work and you shouldn't respect them whenever you can.
That's not correct. You don't have to give your credit card details or even be logged in but you are still required to have any Visual Studio license. For hobbyists and startups the VS Community license is enough but larger companies need a VS Professional license even for the VS Build Tools.
How strict Microsoft is with enforcement of this license is another story.
You do not need a Professional or Enterprise license to use the Visual Studio Build Tools:
> Previously, if the application you were developing was not OSS, installing VSBT was permitted only if you had a valid Visual Studio license (e.g., Visual Studio Community or higher).
From (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/updates-to-visual-stu...). For OSS, you do not even need a Community License anymore.
This does not apply if you're developing closed source:
> if you and your team need to compile and develop proprietary C++ code with Visual Studio, a Visual Studio license will still be required.
That just confirms the parent comment's point. If you're just using the build tools directly, you're fine. If need to develop "with Visual Studio" i.e. the IDE, not just the command line tools, then you need the paid license.
Is the fancy text editor compiling, or the toolchain?
I don’t need visual to write, read, compile, or link any code using the toolchain.
[flagged]
Well, let's say this is the world view of all companies about open-source software. Then what happens. If people "tend to not give crap" about licenses, all the nice guarantees of GPL etc also disappear.
Very weird comparison.
GPL was made in response to restrictive commercial licensing. Yes is uses the same legal document (a license): but is made in response!
So is propriety seizes to exist, then it's not a problem GPL also seizes to exist.
Also: it's quite obvious to me that IP-law nowadays too much. It may have been a good idea at first, but now it's a monster (and people seem to die because of it: Aaron Swartz and Suchir Balaji come to mind).
There are zero guarantees and commercial software uses GPLd software as parts of their products all the time. Licenses do not work and you shouldn't respect them whenever you can.
And a VS license isn't too expensive if you really want to buy one. Stack Social have legit licenses discounted to $15:
https://www.stacksocial.com/sales/microsoft-visual-studio-pr...
This definetly looks like some sort of scam. Like a volume key license being resold against EULA or some such.
> Like a volume key license being resold against EULA or some such.
At least in the EU, this is legal.
Through which means?
I can only provide articles that are in German:
An article about court decision by the EuGH from 2012:
https://www.heise.de/hintergrund/EuGH-Gebrauchte-Softwareliz...
Another court decision from the BGH (the highest German civil court) from 2014 that builds on this EuGH decision:
https://www.heise.de/news/BGH-begruendet-Rechtmaessigkeit-de...