Something came up today in sales-land, both in a phone call and in a couple of emails.
"When's v2008 vol 2 going to be released?"
"Any day now. We discovered a showstopper bug that would affect too many customers, and needed to fix it prior to release."
"OK, I'll wait until it's released before buying DXperience."
To which I was stumped. First, DXperience licenses are sold on a subscription basis. All of our .NET products, even if you buy the controls individually, are sold on a subscription basis. If you buy a product today, you will automatically get all minor updates and major upgrades for a full year. That's 365 days in an ordinary year, or 366 days in a leap year. We just don't sell our .NET products in a grab-your-money-and-run basis, and then charge you big bucks for upgrades. We love our customers and we'd like to see them all in a year's time 
.
If the showstopper bug were horrendous enough, it could be a week before we get it sorted out (and, yes, heads would roll). Presumably these potential customers are ready right now to use DXperience: I don't think waiting for a week is going to help their development schedules. They can download either the latest full release, v2008.1.6, or the release candidate of v2008.2 and use them immediately, and -- it bears repeating -- because DXperience sells on a subscription basis, they'll get a download link for v2008.2 the moment it's ready. And v2008.3. And v2009.1. And most probably 2009.2 (I don't know what the schedule is for next year -- heck, we're still finalizing what to do for v2008.3).
The other point to make is that we do have a rock-solid 60-day no-questions-asked money back guarantee. You want to return a product within the first 60 days: we'll give you your money back. Period. Maybe not as a stack of used bills in a leather briefcase, but you get the idea. (OK, I might ask one question: how we failed so badly that you're abandoning us, but you can just ignore me. Not answering is acceptable.)
So, in summary, you lose nothing by buying DXperience whenever you've decided you need it. You needn't be constrained by our release schedule or our ability to find showstopper bugs on time. You will get our updates and upgrades for a full year (and, some people even moan that we provide too many ) and, by gum, we'll do everything we can through providing great new features and enhancements and world-class support to make sure you renew after that time.
(And before someone comments that DevExpress is obviously running on empty and need all the cashflow they can get, puh-leaze, give me a break. I'm more concerned that potential customers are artificially putting roadblocks in front of their own development progress.)
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