Build Server Licensing Question

We get a lot of questions from customers at the events we run, the answers to which I'm sure will be of interest to others as well. I'm going to publish questions (and answers) that I get and I've asked my team to do the same. Hopefully that way many more of you will see the answers to the great questions we get at these events. I've also considered whether we should perhaps create a separate team blog for this puropose or incorporate an event Q&A section on our local MSDN Website. I'm not sure what the best mechanism is but rather than delay further I've opted to publish in individual blogs and see how it goes.

So, to my first question. We hosted an event on Visual Studio Team System in London last Friday. One of the questions that came up revolved around MSBuild and having a dedicated build lab:

If I'm building an application that has a dependency on say, CMS or BizTalk being installed on my build server, how do I license it?

No point starting with an easy one eh? Unfortunately it's not possible to give complete answers to licensing questions without full details of the specific scenario but these are some general guidelines relating to software development:

  • If you are using a product in a production environment then you need a full licence and pay for what you use at the point of install. Thus if you install SQL Server, you need to pay for it regardless of whether it is active or switched on.
  • If you are using a product for development (including a build lab) then you need a developer licence. This may be from an MSDN subscription, developer copies of product (eg BizTalk has a developer version) or a licence as part of the Certified Partner Programme.

In addition, the following are some useful links regarding MSDN and licensing in general:

I hope some of you found that useful. I'd be very interested in your feedback - are you interested in seeing these types of questions and answers?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2005
    So, if I have a development team and each of them have an MSDN subscription with BizTalk and then we have a build server, do I need a seperate license for the build server or is that covered under the MSDN?
  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2005
    Yeah Scott, that would be my question, too.

    When I for example have two programmers, a full MSDN subscription for each, and a dedicated 3rd comp these two use as build server, would I need a third license for the build server or is it covered in the two MSDN licenses (since the MSDN license is for one programmer and can as far as I know span more than one comp if only this one programmer uses it I would think it might be covered).
  • Anonymous
    March 08, 2005
    Hi Scott, Provided the person(s) doing the builds has an MSDN Licence, you're covered. The "MSDN Getting Started Guide" states: "MSDN Subscriptions are single-user licenses; everyone who uses the products within an MSDN Subscription must have an MSDN license. In other words, one license is required for each user .... In general, you can install MSDN software on any number of machines and on network servers for use by multiple users, so long as you have acquired a separate license for each such user."

    You can find the MSDN Product User Rights Document at http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/resources/#pur and the EULA at http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscriptions/downloads/EULA.pdf
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