TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

Workgroup Edition?

Stuart Ballard — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 16:49:02 GMT

This sounds like a big step in the right direction.

I have a few concerns though - first and foremost, you specifically mention Standard Edition which makes it sound like this option is NOT available to Workgroup Edition users. Which would be me. My understanding was that the very existence of Workgroup Edition was for small development teams who would find the cost of Standard Edition plus CALs prohibitive; doesn't it seem likely that those people would be especially likely to have people who could benefit from this feature?

(This actually relates to my biggest gripe about Workgroup Edition in the first place. My company has five developers today. If we hire a sixth, we suddenly need to go from the Workgroup Edition that comes with MSDN, to buying a full Standard Edition plus six CALs. That's a pretty huge price differential between the five-user case and the six-user case. There really needs to be a way to soften that blow a bit - for example by allowing the 5-user limit on W.E. to be increased, but charging more per user to do this than a S.E. CAL would cost, so that there's a point at which it becomes more expensive than getting S.E. plus CALs)

Another concern is the "work items that they created" aspect. When doing development work for a particular customer, I'd like the option to let them see ALL outstanding issues on their particular project, even issues we create ourselves. It also means that if you want to mark an issue they report as a duplicate of an existing known bug, they have no ability to see the status of the issue it was a duplicate of.

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

davidacoder — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 17:07:17 GMT

How is "unlimited number of users in your company" to be understood? Do they need to have a fixed employment contract? What about freelancers that are close to a company? Also, in principle, this still prohibits something like connect.microsoft.com, where customers of a company are connected up to the bug system, right?

Licensing Changes in Team Foundation Server 2008

Willy-Peter Schaub's Cave of Chamomile Simplicity — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 17:22:12 GMT

We have found one licensing change for TFS2008 to date: No CAL is needed to access work item tracking

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

Mike Chaliy — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:13:22 GMT

Another question. What about using the Team Explorer 2008 for working with Work Items. Is this legal?

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

jkingry — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:36:07 GMT

Will Microsoft Gold Partner's with Custom Development competency receive a standard Team Foundation Server 2008 license as they did with Team Foundation Server 2005?

If so will this be accessible via MSDN downloads or will it only arrive via CD as this seems to be the case with TFS Server 2005.

Thanks!

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

jkingry — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 18:42:48 GMT

Sorry, please ignore previous comment/question, just read you're earlier post: http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2007/11/23/tfs-licensing-change-for-tfs-2008.aspx

Answered all my questions.

Interesting change to TFS licensing

But it works on my PC! — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 00:16:19 GMT

Just seen a post on Brian Harry's blog that the license has been changed for TFS. You no longer need

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

Martin Hinshelwood — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 00:33:56 GMT

As long as any user related extra pages go straight into Sharepoint 2007 where the rest of the TFS Web Access belongs...

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

bharry — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 02:31:02 GMT

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

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

bharry — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 15:51:22 GMT

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

No CAL required to add and edit Work Items with Team Foundation Server 2008!

Scott Munro — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 00:35:50 GMT

This is the best news that I have heard in a while. Using Team Foundation Server to manage bugs has not

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

turkeytickler — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 14:49:58 GMT

I have been reading this thread with a combination of interest and confusion.

When my organisation purchased Team System in late 2005 it was on the express understanding that use of TFS without a CAL was permitted for UAT purposes. See link to content of original Team System 2005 Licensing White Paper;

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:98FVtsAKW4QJ:mail.ezead.com:7080/users/toolman/Ezead%2520Community/Visual%2520Studio/VisualStudio2005Team.doc+%22non-licensed+users+may+access+the+operating+system+and+server+software+solely+for+the+purpose+of+user+acceptance+testing%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&gl=uk

An updated document now appears on the Microsoft site see link; http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1FA86E00-F0A3-4290-9DA9-6E0378A3A3C5&displaylang=en

The provision for the use of Team System without a CAL for UAT purposes is now missing.

It now appears that my organisation needs to upgrade to v2008 if we wish to use the product for UAT purposes.

Some clarity would be appreciated!

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

David — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:15:10 GMT

To check my understanding...

You do not need a CAL to submit a bug or feature request. However, because you are limited to only viewing items you submitted, you cannot search to see if the bug or feature has already been submitted by someone else. Is this correct?

This just about guarantees duplicate/overlapping entries. Multiple entries mean that progress/feedback on a submitted bug or feature will be unlikely to go to every overlapping entry.

In short, non-team members can throw a request into a black hole with little chance of the item ever being updated to provide feedback to the submitter. Additionally, team members get an increase in overlapping entries to sort through. Did I miss anything?

I do not mean to sound negative but I do not really think you have addressed the problem.

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

David — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:20:07 GMT

By the way, given that the subscription rate _DOUBLED_ when TS came out, I would hardly call the workgroup edition "free"

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

bharry — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 04:21:42 GMT

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

Continuous Integration: From Theory to Practice

From the software development trenches — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 23:08:54 GMT

Continuous Integration (CI) is a popular incremental integration process whereby each change made to

TFS licensing change in TFS 2008

Craig Bailey Link Blog — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 07:36:47 GMT

Thanks to Brian Harry for highlighting how they are greatly improving the value of TFS licensing . For

team foundation server 2008 licensing

24100.net :: Ralf Rottmann's Internet Home — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:01:30 GMT

team foundation server 2008 licensing

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

Michael Ruminer — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 15:52:47 GMT

Good stuff. I love this statement...

' We talked about the scenario of searching for duplicates and ultimately decided to exclude it for now because it complicates the message'

Yes... please don't complicate the messsage it's complicated enough. It's a tough nut to crack.

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

John Ciliberti — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 23:36:12 GMT

Is there an Official Microsoft document that discusses the licensing changes. Has the licencing White Paper been updated. Is the TFS CAL included just with MSDN subscriptions or does a Visual Studio Team Edition licience alone cover this?

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

Drew Kennett — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 22:36:15 GMT

If i have a vendor that uses VSS through our Citrix to pass us binary files - do I have to purchase them CALs if I move to tfs 08? All they do is transfer us binary and compiled files using vss currently.

Updates to Team System Web Access

bharry's WebLog — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:20:28 GMT

A few days ago we released a couple of Community Technology Previews (CTPs) for the next release of Team

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

bharry — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 01:43:50 GMT

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

Team System Web Access の更新abc

bharry's WebLog — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 08:47:11 GMT

数日前に、Team System Web Access の次期リリースのための Community Technology Preview (CTP) が 2 つリリースされました。どちらにも、既存の Team

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

keppf — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:27:58 GMT

We want to make project information available to other users (in our company) outside of the development team.

Does every user need a TFS CAL to (readonly) access a project portal?

Thanks Frank

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

Kevin — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:27:04 GMT

Yes. You can share static reports, in an email for example. But everyone who accesses the Team Foundation Server, which includes the project portal, needs a client access license.

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

keppf — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 12:32:33 GMT

Thanks Kevin! That wasn't really clear to me. I thought these users might not need a CAL for accessing just the WSS content (if they don't have read permissions on SQL Reports).

So there's no solution for an unlimited number of internal users to access project portals like the external connector license for external ones. Am I right?

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

LeonG — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 18:38:45 GMT

We are planning to try the trial version of TFS 2008. But we already have licenses for VS2008 Professional for all the developers, which don't include CALs.

My question is: Do we need to buy CALs to use the TFS 2008 trial?

I do know we need them for the full version, and I do know we can install VSTS trail editions (which include CALs) for all the developers, but I just want to know if we can continue using VS2008 pro.

Greetings,

Leon Grave

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

Paul G — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:01:39 GMT

Thanks for the new document. It helps some, but there are still some pieces that are a bit fuzzy to me. All of our development team has VSTS and we have one person on the product side with a CAL that enters work items. However, we have several other folks that would like to be able to see reports and use the project portal to participate in discussions or add wiki info. If I'm reading this correctly, all of those folks would need a CAL as well and they can get a printed version of the report (really?) or have a static version emailed to them, but they couldn't see a report that was pulling from 1 hour old data on in the TFS warehouse?

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

bharry — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:59:41 GMT

Paul, I believe your interpretation is correct but I try to stay out of interpreting the license because the marketing team get's mad at me :). If you send me an email, I will loop in the right person from the marketing team to help you clarify. My email is bharry@microsoft.com

Thanks,

Brian

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

bharry — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:02:03 GMT

Leon, I just saw your question. I missed it somehow. I'm sure it's not relevant any longer but I'll document it for posterity's sake here. No, you do not need CALs to use the trial version. As many people as you like can use the trial version for the 90 days that the trial lasts.

Brian

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

Kreena Amin — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 01:16:41 GMT

we are planning to use the team plain. but we have few departments that they just want to enter the Ticket in to the system and keep track of their ticket only.

1. If they Use TeamPlain do they need CAL Account

2. Who setsup the rule on work items for non-CAL user?

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

petersem — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 07:26:56 GMT

Hi,

I'd like to understand how licensing equates to different roles for a given project. To this end could you give me an idea if a CAL is required for the following different roles under the responsibilities for the role i have given.

- Project manager

(adds work items via project and assigns tasks to project members. Manages delivery times, dependant tasks, risks, issues and schedules.)

- Solution Architect

(Defines technical standards, application design specifications and may have some development role also.)

- Enterprise architect

(Defines overall architecture for h/ware, network and services available)

- Development team leader

(reviews and manages quality issues around development and the developers. Also has a development role. Runs reports on defects and defect resolution.)

- Developer

(writes software and unit tests. Resolves bugs.)

- Build master (may also be a nominated developer or the dev TL)

(Responsible for the build of solutions and thier dependant projects.)

- Tester #1

(Writes system test documentation, writes tests for load and stress testing purposes, submits bugs and then checks these off once marked as resolved. Runs reports on defects and defect resolution.)

- Tester #2

(Submits bugs identified in system testing and then checks these off once marked as resolved. Runs reports on defects and defect resolution.)

- Development manager (may also be development Team leader)

(Reviews overall code quality metrics for projects and developer. Runs reports on defects and defect resolution.)

- Project stakeholder

(Reviews project portal for status of work items and % completed. May also review issues and risks)

- Business analyst

(submits business requirements specification documents and may add to specific work items)

- User acceptance tester (business user)

(May submit defects identified whilst perfroming UAT)

Hopefully this covers most roles. I'm working on the presumption these are all internal staff for the company.

Thanks!

Matt

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

bharry — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:08:48 GMT

As you surmise, CAL requirements are really about what capabilities someone uses, not about what role they play. So whether someone needs a CAL or not will depend a lot on how you've defined the role.

I suspect most of the roles would need a CAL. Here are a few that may not:

User acceptance tester - TFS allows users to "file bugs and review the status of the bugs they have filed" without a CAL. That likely covers what this user needs.

Business analyst - It depends on how they interact with the dev team. If they hand over requirements documents but don't actually use the TFS based tools, they wouldn't need a CAL. If they are checkin/checking out of TFS, reviewing work items, reports, etc, they would. I've seen BAs go both ways.

Tester 2 - could very well get by with the same exception as the user acceptance tester.

Enterprise Architect - I don't see all that many EAs using TFS. Most people define this role/interaction in a way that doesn't use TFS directly today. I think that will change in the future as we add more production/pre-production capabilities.

Project Manager - It's kind of like the BA. Depends on the mode of operation but more likely to need a CAL than not.

The rest likely need a CAL.

To get a difinitive answer to this question for your scenario, I'd recommend talking to a Microsoft sales rep.

Brian

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

Gunnar — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 00:05:21 GMT

Does anyone have detailed information about the External Connector? We work with vendors that need to access our TFS environment to log bugs, read our code, and some of them even to make some code changes for us (maintenance work). These vendors are not affiliated to our organization, so these users are not employees or contractors of our company. To connect to our TFS server, the VPN into our network and then access our server. Most of these users utilize the client application, while others only use the web client. Does my external connector cover these "external users"? Or do I need a CAL for each and every user at the vendor site that does work with us?

re: TFS Licensing Change for TFS 2008

bharry — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:18:20 GMT

Based on what you describe, the external connector may be a good fit for you. It probably makes sense to have a Microsoft sales rep go over it with you and make sure. If you send me an email at bharry@microsoft.com, I can help you find someone who can make sure it's the best solution.

Brian