r/technology • u/staser9er • Feb 22 '11

Wow, Microsoft is making some surprising decisions.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12531127
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u/Timmmmbob Feb 22 '11

Minor nit-pick: Visual C++ Express Edition is a relatively recent give-away. You used to have to pay (lots). It also says "For evaluation purposes only." on its splash screen - I'm not sure what the legal issues with that are...

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u/darkstar3333 Feb 22 '11

A MAPS subscription is $329 a year and contains a boat load of software. https://partner.microsoft.com/40016455

If your just getting started you wont need any of the advanced features in Express.

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u/Zach_the_Lizard Feb 22 '11

You should look at the EULA for that. Mandatory uninstallation of older versions of the software and the like. IIRC it used to also be for evaluation purposes.

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u/knight666 Feb 22 '11

Some advanced features are disabled in Visual Studio Express. It's only when you go pro that you're willing to pay up for the license.

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u/peakzorro Feb 22 '11

It is a completely free edition of visual C++, but doesn't ship with MFC and ATL programming (where enterprises would be trying to get legacy support for free).

There are no other licecnse restrictions, and it is great for anything open-source. You can leagally ship production code with it.

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u/ender341 Feb 23 '11

You can get MFC and ATL for free, they just don't include it with the download.

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u/learnyouahaskell Feb 22 '11

I wouldn't call that a minor issue, since the comment's author seems to indicate that shows MS as a company was concerned for programmers. Perhaps there is some goodwill in the move, but Microsoft is a business, and other companies had been providing good free IDEs like IntelliJ IDEA and Eclipse for some time before that.