---
title: "Blow to open source on VS.NET: VSIP License forbids Open Source"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2007/6/21/blow-to-open-source-on-vsnet-vsip-license-forbids-open-sourc.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2007/6/21/blow-to-open-source-on-vsnet-vsip-license-forbids-open-sourc.html"
published: "2007-06-21T02:52:27"
updated: "2007-06-21T02:52:27"
tags: [".NET", "Community News", "General Software Devel..."]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "Microsoft - why can't you feel his pain ? \"For those of you not in the know (AKA, everybody) they recently switched back to the old distribution EULA, which essentially says, 'sorry, no open source' among other inane…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Blow to open source on VS.NET: VSIP License forbids Open Source

By Roy Osherove June 21, 2007 In [.NET](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net), [Community News](https://osherove.com/blog/category/community-news), [General Software Devel...](https://osherove.com/blog/category/general-software-devel)

**Historical article** · Originally published June 21, 2007; technical details may be outdated.

Microsoft - why can't you [feel his pain](http://codebetter.com/blogs/scott.bellware/archive/2007/06/20/164492.aspx)?

> "For those of you not in the know (AKA, everybody) they recently switched back to the old distribution EULA, which essentially says, 'sorry, no open source' among other inane restrictions. "

> Gee, thanks Microsoft.  I almost accidentally got productive there for a second.  You really helped me dodge a bullet there!
>
> Now I get to ship product to my customers who license the source code with the caveat, "Oh, and don't forget that your developers will also need [SharpDevelop](http://sourceforge.net/projects/sharpdevelop/) on their computers to work with the developer test suite."

**Update**: Looks like I spoke too soon, as did Scott. See [here](http://blogs.msdn.com/dotnetinterop/archive/2006/01/27/517578.aspx) and [here](http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=810974&SiteID=1) for clarification, as well as in

[the comments on Scott's post.](http://codebetter.com/blogs/scott.bellware/archive/2007/06/20/164492.aspx)

## More in .NET

[All posts in .NET](https://osherove.com/blog/category/net)

- Jul 12, 2007

    ### [Watching your computer breath using FileSystemWatcher](https://osherove.com/blog/2007/7/12/watching-your-computer-breath-using-filesystemwatcher.html)

- Jun 29, 2007

    ### [Israeli .NET Bloggers Update](https://osherove.com/blog/2007/6/29/israeli-net-bloggers-update.html)

- Jun 20, 2007

    ### [HTTPSimulator - Simulating HTTP Requests for unit testing made easier](https://osherove.com/blog/2007/6/20/httpsimulator-simulating-http-requests-for-unit-testing-made.html)

- Jun 5, 2007

    ### [Running Matlab, Python and Tcl scripts from .NET](https://osherove.com/blog/2007/6/5/running-matlab-python-and-tcl-scripts-from-net.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

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### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/