I received a pre-sales email today that had more than 20 questions about various aspects of purchasing and licensing our products. Since it took me a little while to reply to it, I thought I'd justify the time spent by posting it here as a kind of FAQ. I've taken the opportunity of editing and pruning the questions to make it flow better.
(UPDATE 22-Sep-2009: Clarified the support policy. I'd been too restrictive in my original answers.)
Q1. What kind of packages does your company offer? What are their features and prices?
JMB. Our packages form a kind of pyramid or a tree. At the bottom are the individual controls or suites of products. The next level up are the packages for individual platforms, one each for WinForms, ASP.NET, WPF and, soon, Silverlight. These have names of the format DXperience <platform>, so, DXperience WinForms, DXperience ASP.NET, DXperience WPF, and, in a few months, DXperience Silverlight. All have the same price: $799.99 for the first year, $299.99 annually thereafter. Above this level is DXperience Enterprise comprising everything we do for .NET on all platforms, except for the eXpressApp Framework (XAF). It includes source for the controls as well as our IDE productivity tools. $1299.99 for the first year, $499.99 thereafter. Finally on top of the pyramid is DXperience Universal which also includes XAF. $1999.99 initially then $799.99 recurring.
Q2. Do you sell controls individually?
JMB. Yes, sometimes. We'll also tend to sell controls as suites, where there is one major control and a set of minor ones that help provide extra functionality for that major control (for example, our grids are shipped as a suite with various editors). To see what controls and suites we provide, please review our complete list here.
Q3. What kind of development license policy do you offer?
JMB. Our licensing is per developer. Each developer that uses our products must have their own license. We don't license per machine, per server, or demand any royalties or run-time fees. You can read our EULA (End-User License Agreement) here.
Q4. What kind of distribution license policy do you offer?
JMB. See the answer to Q3. It bears repeating though: we do not charge you for any deployed application, whether that application is a thick client on an end-user machine, or a web application being served to many thousands of customers from one or more web servers. No royalties, no per-server fees, no per-seat costs.
Q5. Can a license be transferred from one developer to another?
JMB. Yes. In fact you can do this yourself using our website once the company has purchased more than one license. Log in to the Client Center and on the left-hand side there's a link called "Manage & Assign Licenses" where you can assign a particular license to a given email address (that's how we differentiate between developers). You also assign a password at the same time.
Q6. Can a single developer license be used on any number of machines?
JMB. To a certain extent. The EULA specifically states two, but to be honest we don't worry unless there's obvious piracy going on.
Q7. Do you collect any personal information during activation?
JMB. No. The only information required to activate (actually, that should be "to install") is the email address and password associated with the license.
Q8. Is it possible to activate products on a machine that does not have an internet connection?
JMB. Yes, however the validation still has to be done. If the machine being activated is not connected to the internet, our installer displays an opaque data blob that should be sent to us (presumably on another machine), and we reply immediately with another opaque data blob that must be entered into the installer. Once that validation has checked out, the installer will proceed to install the product. The installer will tell you what to do and how to do it.
Q9. What is the warranty period?
JMB. Like all software you purchase, we do not provide any warranty. In essence, we provide the software "as is". To be absolutely sure of what we do or do not provide, you must read the EULA.
However, when you purchase a license, you will have access to all upgrades and updates for a full year. You will also automatically have access to our support team. You can renew after the year is up. If you don't renew, you will no longer get free updates; however, you will continue to get support.
Q10. Do you provide any discounts based on the number of licenses we purchase?
JMB. Yes. Here's the discount table.
Q11. What avenues of support do you provide? What's the response time? How long does support last?
JMB. Support is provided by one of two methods: either by a web-based system we call the Support Center, or by email (support@devexpress.com). We aim to respond to all questions within one business day. We also have a set of forums, however they're not officially covered by the support team and are reserved for peer support from other customers. Support via phone, IM, or chat is not provided. The support team may, in certain circumstances, decide to access your development machine using Remote Desktop or similar, but that's only decided on a case-by-case basis.
Support is only provided to a developer with a valid license — we may on occasion ask for your license details to check — however the license doesn't have to be active. In other words, if you decided not to renew at the end of a year, you will continue to get support. Obviously, if you don't renew and have an issue with the latest version you have, the support team will endeavor to find a fix or a workaround for that version. It may be that the only solution they find requires you to have the current release, in which case you would then have to purchase the upgrade.
Q12. What is the delivery mechanism for your products? Do you offer major/minor versions for new releases? What about service packs or hotfixes?
JMB. Delivery of our products is by download only. We provide 3 major releases of our products a year, with about 3 - 5 minor releases in between. We send you an email when a new release is ready for download. Sometimes we make hotfixes available for certain issues: these are individually downloadable from the issue page in Support Center.
Q13. Do you charge for minor/major releases? Do the service packs/hotfixes cost extra?
JMB. No. When you purchase a license, you get the right to download all releases for a full year for free. At the end of the year, you should renew the license in order to receive all the releases for the next year, and so on.
Q14. Do you offer full source code for your controls?
JMB. Yes, some versions of our products contain all the source code for the controls contained in that product. So for example, DXperience Enterprise contains all the source for the controls for all platforms. For our suites, you'll find that we provide a version without source and one with.
Q15. If source code is available, are we allowed to change the source code? Are there any limitations to doing so?
JMB. Yes, of course you can change the source. However, you would be then responsible for applying the same changes to the source every time we release a new minor/major version (and there could be upwards of 15 releases a year). Sometimes, we may rewrite or refactor our code such that it's no longer obvious how to apply your previous changes. Depending on how extensive your changes are, we might not be able to provide support.
You cannot circumvent our license agreement by providing non-licensed developers with controls you've altered by changing the source. Again, read the EULA to determine what you can or cannot do in this respect.
Obviously, we will not provide our signing keys for any assemblies you modify, so be aware of possible "DLL hell" problems that could occur on end-user machines if they have several apps from different vendors that use our controls.
Q16. Are we allowed to give the source code to the controls (whether we change them or not) to our customers?
JMB. No, the source code is not redistributable, even if you change it. The only files you may distribute are explicitly listed in the EULA.
Q17. If we enhance your controls, is there a partnership program or similar to get our changes into the main product?
JMB. No, I'm afraid there isn't. We do not incorporate other people's code into our own; there are too many legal ramifications to cover, and to be honest we'd prefer implementing the solution to a given issue/suggestion ourselves than paying legal fees to cover those ramifications. We are, after all, developers; it says so in our company name.
Q18. If a bug is reported in any of your controls, would you give us a hotfix? If so, within what timeframe?
JMB. There are no general rules here: it really depends on the severity of the issue, whether there is a temporary workaround, etc. In most cases, you will be able to get a hotfix from support, or from the issue's page in Support Center. Sometimes, there's no possibility of a hotfix and you will have to wait for the next minor release. Since we publish releases every three weeks or so on average, it's unlikely you'd have to wait too long.
Q19. Do you have a premium level of support where you provide dedicated resources to help us or solve the critical bugs we may find?
JMB. No, there is no such premium level of support. We endeavor to fix critical bugs (that is, those without a viable workaround or those visible to many customers) as soon as possible.
