We recently released Vaadin 13. One of the new components in the new platform version is Vaadin Grid Pro. It's the first release of the commercial extension of our free and open source Grid component.
Because we are a commercial open source company, some of the features we release will be free and some will be commercial. However, I think this is the first time we are extending a free component with commercial features. I'll try to answer some questions and concerns that might arise from this. Read on and find out what kind of features we are planning to include in the commercial version and what is happening to the free version? Spoiler: only good things.
Grid Pro is the free Grid plus commercial features
Grid Pro is a commercial extension of Grid. As a basis, it has the same features as the free Grid. In the first release, it brings grid inline editing with full keyboard support.
The free Grid will get new features in the future
Grid continues to live and evolve. We are proud that we can offer such a capable data grid as a free component. We will keep on developing new features to it, and it will be free also in the future. You can expect to see new features coming in both the free and commercial components.
Some features will be commercial, core features will be free
Features that we believe are part of the core Grid experience will remain free. We don’t want to make migration from Vaadin 7 or Vaadin 8 feel like we are forcing the user to pay to get the same capabilities that their app had before. Therefore, Grid features that will bring us closer to feature parity with Vaadin 8 are features that would go to the free Grid. Free features would include things like column width based on content or showing or hiding columns. We don't want to limit our users' capabilities to build great user experience with the free version.
Examples for possible commercial features in the future could be for instance exporting to Excel/CSV format or aggregation/summary rows. It is still a bit up in the air how to proceed when we hit parity between Vaadin 8 and Vaadin 10+ Grid.
Summary
Vaadin Grid will be free and open source in the future too, and it will receive new improvements and fixes in the coming months and years. Moreover, both the free and commercial version will be included in the next LTS release, and thus will be supported for five years. I hope I answered the most significant questions and concerns. If you have any more questions, please comment this post.