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Hello!

I have purchased a program from a freelancer. It was entirely done in C# on windows and I want to check whether this .exe was compiled on a licensed version of windows. Is it possible somehow to check whether it was compiled down on a legal version of windows?

How about the IDE??? I mean is it possible to uncover whether that .exe was made by legally obtained Visual Studio for example???

Thanks
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Christian Graus 21-Aug-12 18:11pm    
No, that's not at all possible. Therefore, if the amount you paid is such that you'd expect they probably couldn't afford to own windows, it's unlikely to cause you any harm. It might give you reason to be concerned about the quality of the code, however.

Do you have the source code? The IDE is neither here nor there: you can compile with the free tools on the command line and whether or not the code was created and compiled on a licensed copy of Windows is also irrelevant - the code/compiler won't care about the the OS being licensed or not. Why do you ask?
 
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Christian Graus 21-Aug-12 18:12pm    
Because he paid someone 20 cents an hour and he's scared if he releases the exe, Microsoft will come looking for him.
R. Giskard Reventlov 21-Aug-12 18:16pm    
Probably, but I want him to say it! :-)
Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 21-Aug-12 18:21pm    
Knock, knock... :-)
--SA
Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 21-Aug-12 18:20pm    
5ed. Please see also my answer. Good question at the end, as if OP was afraid of being caught... :-)
--SA
mkheidzedavid 21-Aug-12 18:41pm    
No no, not 20 cents, fee was rational and very acceptable believe this is not any problem. The problem is that I have 0% chance of verification if he used licensed versions and that's all. Im not scared of MS at all. Just wanna stay legal - from my side everything is ok, from other party - not sure. That's why Im asking.
As far as I know, you can't verify that properly licensed tools were used to build the application. For example the freelancer may have one valid copy but he has used that on several computers which would be against the license.

These kind of questions are typically taken care by making a proper contract where you define the responsibilities for both parties. For example you can define that the freelancer is responsible for holding proper licenses for all the tools used for building an application and you have no obligations concerning those and so on.
 
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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 21-Aug-12 18:31pm    
Good point, a 5.
I remember, Borland had a "non-nonsense user agreement" based on the "like book" rules: a developer could make several copies of the software on several computers and use them all as soon as only one copy is used at a time; and it does not really matter is another person uses it (anyone is allowed to borrow a book). This required certain trust and is very reasonable, because most of use do some work at home at some in the office/lab.
--SA
Wendelius 22-Aug-12 15:33pm    
Yep, that sounds reasonable :)
Prasad_Kulkarni 22-Aug-12 1:53am    
I Agree +5
Wendelius 22-Aug-12 15:33pm    
Thanks :)
There is no way just because there is no difference. The compilation of C# projects is totally and officially free. You don't need anything except the (freely redistributable) .NET Framework. (Even this is not required, because you can compile on the Mono platform, on Windows or other OS, and it will work on Windows without recompilation). Visual Studio is irrelevant here: it does not build anything at all. It is done via MSBuild.exe which in turn uses C# compiler, both included with the redistributable .NET Framework package.

If you want, you can develop everything without IDE, using just the regular text editor, but this is not a very convenient way.

As to the IDE, you can also use Visual Studio Express supplied free of charge. Alternatively, you can use the open-source tool like SharpDevelop.
Please see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Studio[^],
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us[^],
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Studio_Express[^],
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010-editions/express[^],
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SharpDevelop[^],
http://www.icsharpcode.net/[^],
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_%28software%29[^],
http://www.mono-project.com/[^].

[EDIT]

I removed your "solution" post because it's not supposed to be here, but I'll try to answer your question.
What you were asking about looked like the royalty fee. No, there is no such thing, not even close. I never heard that any serious development tools (expensive or not) took any royalty, ever. This is more typical for some low-quality bloated "graphical" highly "automated", "easy-to-use" tools, probably designed for complete morons and loosers.

Stay legal,
—SA
 
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R. Giskard Reventlov 21-Aug-12 18:24pm    
Good answer.
Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 21-Aug-12 18:27pm    
Thank you, Mark.
--SA
AmitGajjar 22-Aug-12 0:55am    
I prefer Mono project if someone afraid of license issue.it's really a good alternative of VS IDE 5+ :)
Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 22-Aug-12 1:31am    
There is no such issue. Thank you, Amit.
--SA
AmitGajjar 22-Aug-12 1:35am    
I mean if i have license issue then i rather go for mono project.

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