CODEWITHSUNDEEP
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Abel
Abel

Reputation: 57159

License for Visual Studio 2017 Enterprise or Professional for Preview editions expires, contrary to the EULA or instructions

This issue is about that VS2017 Preview stops working, seemingly because of a license issue, but it's a scenario that I believe is supported and behavior of VS is in error; this is not a duplicate of this question.

While Microsoft writes "We strongly recommend" that you use the same version you have a license for, that text does not exclude that scenario. The EULA allows to use it until it becomes RTM.

However, my Visual Studio Enterprise Preview (15.5 P1) now says that the trial license is expired, and while it has a button to renew that trial, that seems to have no effect.

So, I've tried the following (I believe, all legal):

The error message I see:

We could not unlock Visual Studio with the accounts available. Please ensure that you have added an account with a valid subscription and the account is authenticated.

enter image description here

And in my subscriptions page it says that no key is required, it doesn't say the license has ended:

enter image description here

Upvotes: 1

Views: 5562

Answers (1)

Abel
Abel

Reputation: 57159

(I did receive an answer from Microsoft after posting again)

Bottom line is: in their EULA they do not forbid this scenario, and on the Preview Editions page, they only say "we do not recommend it", but as the answer from Microsoft shows, it is not only not recommended, it is simply not possible.

So:

  • if you use Enterprise Preview then the Trial License is shared with the RTM License for the same product (even though they are physically different licenses).
  • Whether or not you have the RTM product installed, the license for Preview will expire
  • If you use Professional Preview, the same.
  • A Professional License is not valid to test-drive Enterprise Preview.
  • Having no license at all means: you can only use Preview until the license expires.

Bottom line: after the trial period, you are stuck with Community Preview. In other words, if you want to help Microsoft getting rid of their bugs in Enterprise or Professional by diligently installing the Preview editions, you have to pay $539/year (Professional) or $2999/year (Enterprise).

Note that this rule is not enforced legally, as legally you can use the Preview edition until the Preview edition becomes an RTM edition (i.e., VS2017 15.5 Preview 1, 2 etc, until 15.5 becomes RTM). Practically, they prevent it, though.

If you are an OSS developer, even for Microsoft-owned products such as Paket or F#, you cannot test your products with Preview editions of Professional or Enterprise, until you decide to buy them (but for most OSS developers, that price may be too steep). This is unfortunate, as the plugin/addon system for Community and Professional is quite different.

Upvotes: 2

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