Anaconda announced that commercial users should purchase the licenses on APR, 20, 2020. However, Azure Machine Learning heavily depends on this anaconda packages; developing models on computing instance and deploy container environment. Do commercial developers have to pay to anaconda to continue usage of Azure Machine Learning with anaconda?

@Eisuke Yonezawa If you are have the commercial version of Anaconda you can configure the same for your experiments to deploy packages that are available under license but in most cases you can simply use conda to install available python packages without paying for the commercial license. There is no restriction to have a commercial license to continue using Azure Machine Learning with anaconda. I hope this helps!!

Anaconda commercial use on Azure Machine Learning

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romungi-MSFT 44,951 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2020-11-17T08:44:06.227+00:00

@Eisuke Yonezawa If you are have the commercial version of Anaconda you can configure the same for your experiments to deploy packages that are available under license but in most cases you can simply use conda to install available python packages without paying for the commercial license. There is no restriction to have a commercial license to continue using Azure Machine Learning with anaconda. I hope this helps!!
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Eisuke Yonezawa 21 Reputation points

2020-11-18T01:52:49.973+00:00

Great!
But let me confirm a little bit more.

You said "in most cases", I'd like to know the exceptions.
And I want to confirm the following cases.

Installing new conda packages to the computing instances ($conda install <new package>)

Build conda environments for training in the computing clusters (TensorFlow(conda_packages="<packages>") )

Deploy models and create endpoints on AKS or ACI ( CondaDependencies().add_conda_package("<package>") )

I referred to the following anaconda statement.
"If you are using Anaconda in a commercial environment with more than 200 employees, you should purchase a Commercial Edition license."
https://www.anaconda.com/products/individual/get-started-commercial-edition-1

Eisuke Yonezawa 21 Reputation points

2020-11-18T01:53:35.12+00:00

Let me allow to add more

Microsoft and Anaconda may have an agreement to allow Azure ML users to install new packages.
So, even the commercial users (more than 200 employees) don't have to purchase the license when they use anaconda only on Azure.
Is it true?

romungi-MSFT 44,951 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2020-11-18T07:23:19.873+00:00

@Eisuke Yonezawa I think you are referring to this announcement from Microsoft and Anaconda.
Azure ML allows you to configure conda to install the available open source packages. The commercial edition from Anaconda is a standalone offering from Anaconda which you can also configure with Azure ML but is not a requirement from Azure ML to use commercial version for your experiments as by default the conda configuration will use the available open source packages.

Eisuke Yonezawa 21 Reputation points

2020-11-18T07:37:30.207+00:00

OK, Thank you for your reply.
I got it.
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Anaconda commercial use on Azure Machine Learning

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