A. At some point in the future, for new users, the product may someday no longer be licensed for free. However, if you register before that happens, it will always remain free for you. By registering now, we will treat you as if you purchased a paid license for the product. You will receive a registered license key which will continue to work in new versions, so you can benefit from bug fixes and even some of the many new features we're working on.

This isn't hidden away somewhere, it has always been up front (I just checked archive.org to be sure), and for half the product's life (the past 4 months) we have also put, right up front, this message and similar ones, to promote the advanced updates:

"Professional-level support and advanced updates available with Vanguard subscription"

And, as far as saying that "it is not cheap at all compared to competitors", currently, it is. The competing WPF offering's "product + 1 year subscription" is in fact close to double the $500 price of Xceed DataGrid for WPF's product + 1 year subscription.

Odi

Xceed DataGrid for WPF remains free. We have released 2 major updates to it over the course of the year, both which included a bunch of free new features, some big ones, some small ones. There have been 4 bug fix updates so far this year, each with a nice list of bug fixes. We have provided all this to all customers (of the free version) at no charge, as promissed. The competition's pay-only grid has had 0 major updates this year. We're working hard on the product.

Why do you claim that all of a sudden the control is not free anymore? ...and use terminology like "fiasco", when the general feedback on our forums is that we're doing it right?

There is no "branched version", by the way, just one single control. So we cannot (and wouldn't even try) to provide bug fixes only to some users, but not others.

To add to the discussion, think of the missing data grid in WPF.

For v1.0, released in January, the hours spent creating Xceed DataGrid for WPF racked up easily past 10K. Moreover, the team's size has increased since the days we started the project, and while I don't have the numbers yet, I estimate this number could have doubled by now.

Some of those hours were spent working on optional features that will provide Xceed with some return on investment. Features available only as an upgrade. Features that you can completely ignore if you want to, they aren't essential, and either way, they never (historically) would have been included by Microsoft in a built-in data grid. Mainly, they are:

- Rich printing and exporting capabilities
- Fixed columns
- Statistics functions

Does the existence of these options mean the control is not free anymore all of a sudden, and that it doesn't "fill in the gap left by Microsoft" all while still being free?

I wonder if you agree that the free Xceed DataGrid for WPF offers a lot of value, more than the competition's pay-only grid? And how about versus an eventual (as yet completely unnanounced) free built-in Microsoft data grid for WPF?

With the eventual built-in Datagrid, historically speaking, you don't even get grouping functionality. That was a major undertaking for us, especially to get virtualization working with it. Also, remember the improved Windows Forms grid control introduced in .NET 2.0? A completely new control you had to learn and reimplement just to get some improvements. We never had to do that, with the large amount of time spent creating a good object model right up front. And don't expect 4-5 updates a year from Microsoft, but rather, one every couple of years on average. Support? A couple hundred $ a call. An upgrade path to obtain advanced features such as rich printing, master/detail, etc? Not a chance, let alone being able to turn them on by just switching a license key from the free one to a paid one. Availability of source code? Not historically.

I could go on.

I just don't get it. Why do you say the control is not free, when all the features most of the market wants, or at least expects to be in WPF, are given away, bug fixes are free and frequent, and there's nothing important missing to force you to buy the advanced features subscription?

You didn't mention wether you're talking about the free Xceed data grid for WPF or the Windows Forms one.

Either way, the Xceed technical support team would love to answer your question. Why not post it on the Xceed forums? (http://forums.xceed.com)

(Edit: In fact, from experience, posts about third party components or tools are rarely answered on public forums other than by "go to the company's web site" answers... I see this all the time in newsgroups and forums all over the place.)

Thanks,
Odi