Visual Studio Express Free for One Year
Yesterday (Nov. 7, 2005) Microsoft released “Express” Editions of Visual Studio and SQL Server. These new editions to the Visual Studio lineup come with a free 1 year license.
What is an Express Edition? From the mouth of the beast itself:
The Express Editions are an expansion of the Visual Studio and SQL Server product line to include lightweight, easy-to-use, and easy-to-learn tools for hobbyists, students, and novice developers who want to build dynamic Windows applications, Web sites, and Web services.
Express Editions are available for: VB.NET, Visual C#, Visual C++, Visual J# and an edition built especially for dynamic web development creatively titled Web Developer. Also available for download is SQL Server Express Edition. SQL Server Express Edition is a replacement for the SQL Desktop Engine that came bundled with past editions Visual Studio. It is designed mainly for building and testing data-driven applications.
Average download size is between 35-70Mb per Express Edition. I know you may be wondering about licensing restrictions, but rest assured, commercial use is allowed (straight from their FAQ sheet “there are no licensing restrictions for applications built using the Express Editions”).
Optional components are also available such as the MSDN Express Library.
Tags: Microsoft, Visual Studio, .NET, Developer, VS.NET, VB.NET, C#, C++, J#, SQL, SQL Server, MSDN
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*GASP* Microsoft is actually “giving” something away, as in for free? For a whole year? Who’da thunk it? Could this be an effort to rattle the open source community into thinking that they (Microsoft) aren’t really the blood-sucking cash-mongers we’ve all come to love and admire, and may actually start listening to their customers for a change?
Knowing my love for the VB.NET environment, you can only imagine how much this news thrills me. Ya know, OS X comes bundled with a pretty robust “Developer” package for building apps in Cocoa, Carbon, Applescript, Java, C, etc., I hate to say it, but by doing the same thing as Apple (i.e. giving away a fairly decent programming environment) Microsoft may actually be trying to do something right, for a change. Still, who’da thunk it.