Thoughts about setup and deployment issues, WiX, XNA, the .NET Framework and Visual Studio
All postings are provided AS IS with no warranties, and confer no rights. Additionally, views expressed herein are my own and not those of my employer, Microsoft.
The official deployment guides for system administrators and application developers have been posted on MSDN, and I wanted to provide links here to help raise visibility for them. Here they are along with some additional information about what is contained in each of them:
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Deployment Guide for Application Developers
You can find the deployment guide for application developers at the following location:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/cc160716.aspx
The deployment guide for application developers is targeted at developers creating applications that depend on the .NET Framework 3.5 and that will need to incorporate the .NET Framework 3.5 into their installation process. It contains the following information:
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Administrator Deployment Guide
You can find the administrator deployment guide at the following location:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/cc160717.aspx
The administrator deployment guide is targeted at system administrators that manage software installation on corporate networks and who want to plan a deployment of the .NET Framework 3.5 to networks that they manage. It contains the following information:
Links with additional information
I have previously posted a few items on my blog that are not covered (or are touched on but not covered in much detail) in the above deployment guides. Here are links to those posts in case you need additional information about deploying the .NET Framework 3.5 or its prerequisites (such as the .NET Framework 2.0 SP1 and/or 3.0 SP1):
Sorry, I have to ask. I noticed the Deployment Guide for Application Developers makes no reference to redist/eula restrictions while repeatedly mentioning to use /Q for the deployment.
Does this mean we can finally put to rest the whole point of are ISV's allowed to deploy the framework silently or is this still not authorative and we are going to keep hearing that ISV's are violating Microsofts rights from certain people?
Hi Christopher - I'm sorry, but I don't know the answer to this question. This deployment documentation is consistent in format and content to the ones previously published for the .NET Framework 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0. The documentation in the deployment guides linked here is technical documentation, not legal/policy documentation. That means it lists what is technically possible, not what is legally permissable.
My understanding is that the terms of the license agreement displayed during full UI mode of .NET Framework 3.5 setup are applicable in any installation scenario, regardless of whether you suppress the license agreement with the /q switch. I haven't read through the full text of the license agreement though, so I don't know if/how silent install is treated by those terms.
I'm not sure who you are hearing from that silently installing the .NET Framework is violating any of the license terms (since I see many non-Microsoft products that depend on a version of the .NET Framework and run it in silent mode as a part of their setup if it is not yet installed on the user's system). Can you let me know if this information is coming from folks within Microsoft so I can try to follow up with them directly to figure out what the story is here?
I see many installs also, but there has been a lot of buzz in the blogosphere mostly pointing to this link.( See Distribution Principals section
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480235.aspx
Note the part that says even if you obtain a redistribution license you are not granted the right to suppress the EULA by enabling silent install.
Yet all of the how to documents reccomend the silent mode.
Hi Christopher - Thanks for the link. I've seen that ISV Redistribution Guide in the past but had forgotten about it because it has been a while. I will try to follow up on this on my side with the author of that guide.
As a side note - it has always been personally frustrating to me that Microsoft would consider placing restrictions on deploying runtime components in silent mode like this. It just doesn't make any sense to me because it acts to discourage ISVs from including the component in their installer, makes the ISV product install experience more jarring/confusing, etc. I would think that anything that can be done to encourage getting this type of runtime components on as many systems as possible would be preferred, because then a wider range of applications will just work. Maybe that's why I've got an engineering degree instead of a law degree? :-)
I don't know if you follow my blog but I completely agree with you:
http://blog.deploymentengineering.com/2007/12/to-redist-or-not-to-redist-that-is.html
I also tried to raise the issue last March:
http://blog.deploymentengineering.com/2007/03/silently-installing-net-framwork-legal.html
Saw this first on Aaron Stebner's blog : .NET Framework 3.5 deployment guides have been published
PingBack from http://blog.cwa.me.uk/2008/01/30/the-morning-brew-21/
Since the .NET Framework 2.0 SP1 and 3.0 SP1 shipped (as prerequisites for the .NET Framework 3.5 and
PingBack from http://msdnrss.thecoderblogs.com/2008/02/19/how-to-perform-a-silent-repair-and-uninstall-of-the-net-framework-20-sp1-and-30-sp1/
The .NET Framework 3.5 setup package is a chainer that installs multiple packages behind the scenes. 
A while back, I wrote a blog post about how to perform silent repairs and uninstalls for the .NET Framework
Details about the .NET Framework 2.0 setup packaging Available command line switches for .NET Framework