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Clarification of acceptable use cases in the Visual Studio Code license terms #162510

Open ArrayBolt3 opened 1 year ago

ArrayBolt3 commented 1 year ago

From the Microsoft Software License Terms for Microsoft Visual Studio Code:

a. General. You may use any number of copies of the software to develop and test your applications, including deployment within your internal corporate network.

b. Demo use. The uses permitted above include use of the software in demonstrating your applications.

The initial interpretation I'm getting from this is that Visual Studio Code can only be used for development, testing, and demonstration of applications. So what if I happened to really like VSCode as a general purpose text editor and decided to write a book in it? How about a personal to-do list? What about all of the other uses people have for a text editor? Would these use cases be against the license terms?

Is this intentional? Is VSCode really supposed to be used only for software development, testing, and demonstration, and that's it? If not, it might be helpful to relax the terms somewhat so that people who stick to the license terms for dear life (like me) are happy.

(For now I'm sticking to the initial interpretation of the terms and am only using VSCode for the use cases specifically spelled out in the license agreement.)

VSCodeTriageBot commented 1 year ago

We closed this issue because it is a question about using VS Code rather than an issue or feature request. Please search for help on StackOverflow, where the community has already answered thousands of similar questions. You may find their guide on asking a new question helpful if your question has not already been asked. See also our issue reporting guidelines.

Happy Coding!

jtcantin commented 1 year ago

I think this might answer the OP's question: Can Visual Studio Code be used for commercial purposes?

ArrayBolt3 commented 1 year ago

I don't think that helps me. I'm not concerned with whether VSCode can be used for commercial purposes or not, but if it can be used for non-coding, general-purpose text editing purposes. The license agreement allows the use of official VSCode binaries for the purposes of developing, testing, and demonstrating software, and deploying software in an internal network. It doesn't allow for uses other than software-related stuff, however, and there are many things people may do with a text editor other than develop software.

jtcantin commented 1 year ago

@ArrayBolt3 Hmm... ok. Perhaps asking on https://law.stackexchange.com/ may help.