when does it stop being free

hi we are having a bit of a debate here at my new place of employment.  I told one of our infrastructure guys that the desktop has always been free as far as i know.    And therefore with permission he should be allowed to deploy it to an employee's desktop even without them having a pbi license.  I believe he finally agreed after he read the license agreement.  what i dont know is if an employee can post a question here wiythout a license.  Im assuming cloud AD lists only the folks who currently have a license.  And posting here requires that the employee's email address be already known in that cloud AD.  So they cant post here without a license.  Is tha true?  I have a pro license here and assume my new company pays for it.  But i also have a personal one which i've never paid a dime for and cannot recall if that was before or after i got 365.