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The Action Pack (see here: https://partner.microsoft.com/global/40138499) seems to be incredibly good value if I am understanding it correctly.

The price is $490 and if I'm understanding correctly it comes with 3x VS2010 Professional licenses, and on top of that, commercial use licenses for 10 Office 2010 Professional Plus users, 1x Server 2008 R2, 1x Exchange Server, heaps of CALS. Am I missing something here? It seems to be far to cheap.

Sam
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because **it is about licensing or legal issues**, not programming or software development. [See here](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/274964/1402846) for details, and the [help/on-topic] for more. – Kevin Brown-Silva Jun 16 '15 at 23:54

2 Answers2

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There are some restrictions for the MS Action Pack:

  • Your company must have fewer than 100 employees
  • Your company cannot hold a MS silver or gold competency
  • You can't install Action Pack licensed software at a client site or use it for hosting commercial websites
  • You can only use it at your businesses main business location
  • You can't sell the licenses onto someone else

They've got a full list here:Action Pack Restrictions and Usage Rights

So:

You can use the software to develop and test applications but not to run an app in a production environment. Once you start making money from your software MS wants its dime.

But, as you say, it's a very good deal.

Faster Solutions
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  • Excellent response to an older question. Thanks. The link you gave me was exactly what I was after. – Sam Aug 20 '12 at 23:56
  • @Faster Solutions, You say "Once you start making money from your software MS wants its dime". Does that mean I can not sell softwares built on these Windows? – Sabya May 22 '13 at 13:49
  • You can sell software built using Action Pack licensing, you just can't use Action Pack software to host production services. So, if your software talked to a set of web services, these services couldn't be hosted on server software using Action Pack licensing. You'd need to go and buy a license for production. – Faster Solutions May 23 '13 at 07:49
  • This is an old question and a closed question, but I'm wondering if you could confirm or deny something. According to this posting https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1091585-cheapest-option-for-buying-visual-studio-2015-for-development a Visual Studio obtained via Action Pack will expire after one year unless you renew the Action Pack subscription. Is this correct, as far as you know? – RenniePet Apr 26 '16 at 13:52
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I believe you have to agree to certain requirements related to active participation in the Microsoft ecosystem. Provided you are actually developing software for Windows or to run on Azure, it is worthy of serious consideration.

Terence Johnson
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