I've been very busy over the last month working on the new NCrunch website and v1.42, reading everyone's comments about the commercialisation announcement, and planning for how things will progress over the next couple of months.  I'll try to share these plans here so that everyone has a good understanding of what will be happening and what to expect.

First of all, I have to say that I'm blown away by positive the response I've had from everyone around the commercialisation plans.  I wrote that last blog post with a considerable amount of dread .. expecting the worst.  I'm glad that most people understand the reasoning behind why NCrunch is going commercial and that I'm trying to do this in the best interests of the products future.  Unfortunately the wide circulation of the post also made it a target for spammers, so I apologise if I haven't been diligent enough with moderating/approving everyone's comments in a timely fashion.

I can now confirm 100% that v1.42 will be the first non-beta release of NCrunch.  While no software product is ever perfect, I'm convinced that NCrunch is stable enough that I'm prepared to drop the 'b' and move towards larger longer term release plans.  As such, v1.42 won't be a big feature release and instead will be focused only on fixing high priority issues, along with introducing the new licensing features.  Further revisions to v1 will be limited to fixes and minor compatibility adjustments with the bigger changes and features being rolled into the future NCrunch v2.  Many of the future features planned for NCrunch carry a degree of risk that I feel uncomfortable introducing without first conducting wider testing, so v2 will likely have its own beta programme that will kick off later in its development cycle.

After much careful consideration, I can now also share the pricing details for the new commercial model.

As mentioned earlier, NCrunch will have two different pricing tiers.  One for named users (aka 'Personal' license) and one for company seats (aka 'Corporate' license).

The Named User License is for individuals who purchase a license for themselves or as a gift for another named developer.  There aren't any kind of restrictions on the type of work that can be done with this license (i.e. personal vs professional), although the license is owned solely by an individual and cannot be purchased by a company.  These licenses will be on sale for $159 USD each.

The Company Seat License is available for purchase by companies, and license keys will be issued in the company name.  This means that if a developer leaves your organisation, the key stays with the company.  These licenses will be on sale for $289 USD per seat.

I've done my best to keep the prices in line with industry norms while taking into account my own overheads and processing fees, etc.  I can only hope that these figures won't be surprising to anyone and that there is an understanding that NCrunch will of course pay for itself very quickly in the productivity gains realised.

There will, of course, be a 30 day evaluation period for anyone that wants to try the product before paying for it.  30 days is quite generous and I hope this will be long enough for the product to prove its value and for people to be certain that it will work correctly in their development environment.

About two weeks from now, I'll be rolling out a major upgrade to this website to bring it up to a commercial standard.  The upgrade will coincide with the release of NCrunch v1.42, the first release to contain the new licensing features.  When the new website comes online, it will have all the facilities necessary for people to purchase license keys in order to make the move to v1.42.  The v1.41b release build will expire on the 1st of November (about a month from now), so this should give a good couple of weeks for everyone to upgrade and make sure the new version works correctly for them.

As v1.42 will be packaged with a 30 day evaluation license, it is theoretically possible (with a late upgrade) to continue using NCrunch without a commercial license up until the 1st of December.  If at all possible I strongly recommend not leaving your purchasing of a license until the last minute to ensure that you're not forced to run your tests manually without NCrunch.

Thanks everyone for your understanding!  I hope to make this process as smooth and painless for everyone as I possibly can.

--------- Update 3rd of October ---------

I've turned off further comments on this post as much of the discussion isn't bringing new information into light and is starting to disintegrate into arguments.  If anyone has any further questions about the pricing, please submit them via the contact form and I'll share any relevant answers here.  Thanks everyone for your feedback and understanding.