bharry's WebLog

As I was writing the post I knew someone was going to ask the question about Workgroup Edition.  I wrote "Standard Edition" because I know we put it in there.  I can't remember if we put it in Workgroup Edition or not.  I'll find out but with everyone out for the holidays I can't do it right now.

I agree the cliff of workgroup from 5 to 6 is unfortunate.  We've toyed with a few ideas to try to address this but haven't found a good way yet.  Question - do all of your 5 developers have Team System client SKUs or do some of them have Pro?

We debated for 6 months exactly what the limitation should be for the "free unlimited use scenario".  The problem is that a lot of the power of TFS is in work item tracking.  If we let you query, view and edit any work items then you are using a huge portion of the value of TFS.  The problem is we intend for people closely associated with the development team to buy a CAL.  Free work item tracking would eliminate the need for many people to buy CALs.  We settled on the "file a bug" scenario because it was very hard to argue that application end users who occasionally file bugs are really getting a ton of value from TFS individually - although the overall organization is benefiting.  As I said, depending on how this goes, we may look at broadening the covered scenarios.  One of the customers on our advisory council has made an impassioned plea that we broaden it to cover acceptance testing - which requires viewing things (like requirements, etc) that the user didn't enter themselves.  We'll see.

Yes, the "unlimited users within your company" applies to employees, contractors and vendors.  No, this license doesn't provide for something like connect.microsoft.com.  We have a separate license for that (and have had it for 2 years) called the "external connector license".  It allows you to pay a fixed price to publish public access to your TFS for non-employies, contractors and vendors.

The partner programs (as far as I know - and I'm pretty sure) did not change.  So, if you got TFS 2005, you will get TFS 2008.  You will recieve it by mail in the January partner mailing.

We're working on integrating Team System Web Access into Sharepoint.  All of the TSWA controls will be Sharepoint web parts and can be wired together in customized experiences.  However, that's not likely to happen in the timeframe I mentioned above.  We'll see though.

Brian

Jeff Beehler tracked down the EULA wording for me.  Here it is:

3. ADDITIONAL LICENSING REQUIREMENTS AND/OR USE RIGHTS.

a. Client Access Licenses (CALs) - (Standard Edition Only).

i. You must acquire and assign the appropriate CAL to each device or user that accesses your instances of the server software directly or indirectly.  A hardware partition or blade is considered to be a separate device.

* You do not need CALs for any of your servers licensed to run instances of the server software.

* You do not need CALs for up to two devices or users to access your instances of the server software only to administer those instances.

* You do not need a CAL to access work item tracking functionality to create new work items, or view and update work items you opened.

* Your CALs permit access to your instances of earlier versions, but not later versions, of the server software.  

As you can see, the new "bug filing" clause only applies to Standard Edition.  I don't remember discussing this particular issue but seeing as we debated this and so many other options for 6-9 months, we probably did and it's just leaked out of my mind.  If I were to try to retroactively create the arguement, I suspect it would go something like - Workgroup Edition is already a terrificly good deal.  It's basically "free" if you buy MSDN + VSTS client SKU.  This new licensing clause adds substantial value and it makes sense to "bolster" the value in Standard Edition with it.

Technilogically speaking, it would have been difficult for us to enable this in Workgroup Edition due to the way we enforce the 5 user limit.  There is a special group that identifies the 5 users.  If anyone else tries to access the server, their request is rejected.  Enabling the unlimited "file a bug" user would have meant removing this 5 user limit or adding new restrictions that clearly carve out exactly what these "file a bug" users are allowed to do.  At the API level, that turns out to be very hard to do - which is why we are pursuing the custom web page approach.

I know some of you aren't going to like this answer and I'm sorry about that.

Brian

David, you are correct.  We talked about the scenario of searching for duplicates and ultimately decided to exclude it for now because it complicates the message.  If you can search for and view any work item, then you have a hard time deliniating what work item tracking functionality you can't do and we weren't ready to include all work item tracking functionality for free.

In the future we may enable this - for example, maybe we enable only full text searching but no other kinds of queries.  That would probably be restrictive enough to prevent it from being equivalent to all work item tracking functionality but still enable the scenario.

I think you understand it and yes, we recognize that downside.

I'm not sure what you mean about the price doubling.  The price was exactly the same as MSDN Universal except you also got a VSTS Role SKU.  So it was actually more value for the same money.  You are right that it's about double if you upgraded to Suite.  However, you are right that it isn't "free".  That's not a very precise word.  It's "included in your MSDN Premium + VSTS SKU purchase".  "Free" is just less typing :)

Brian

Drew, it would depend on how they do it.  If they checkin directly to TFS, they will need a CAL.  You could probably just buy one or two CALs for them and let them use those to submit the files.  If they are just copying the files (using FTP or some such) and then someone on your side (with a CAL) checks them in, then, of course, they don't need a CAL.

Brian