VS2005 - Will it require activation?

Probably not. Usually product activation is part of the beta program so they can see if there will be potential problems.

All Visual Studio.Net versions have had product keys, just MSDN users don't enter them.

FDB

I agree with Fluffy, there have been no signs of it yet, nor any rumors about it. In fact, consider this... two other major releases of VS have occurred since Windows XP and Office XP first shipped with product activation.

It is an interesting take on Microsoft’s view of software piracy, or at least as I see it. Office and Windows, their two major bread and butter products have product activation to keep you from running multiple copies, helping to ensure more copies are purchased.

On the other hand, their development tools are far easier to illegitimately acquire and use. I don’t want to sound like I am justifying piracy, it is interesting to consider that the more people with them (legitimate or not), the more developers for their platform, theoretically helping to drive sales of things like Windows and Office.

FluffyDevilBunny wrote:

All Visual Studio.Net versions have had product keys, just MSDN users don't enter them.

Was that a retail or academic version?

I've never seen a test build with activation built in. That is interesting.

FDB

FluffyDevilBunny wrote:

Was that a retail or academic version?

I've never seen a test build with activation built in. That is interesting.

 

FDB

W3bbo wrote:

Since I've reformatted my boxes more than 5 times, it now requires me to phone up Microsoft manually to get it activated. Quite a pain indeed.