They're completely comfortable with and unapologetic about the model. And they're not hiding anything.
Also, I can't see this approach working. Getting enterprise adoption of a front end framework is almost impossible outside of React, let alone paying for a niche one, and the "contact us" approach is a non-starter.
If the core of the framework fits what you need, you could write those additional plugins yourself, rather than relying on the official "pro" ones. My understanding so far is the plugin architecture is intentionally designed for this usecase, so you aren't beholden to the official maintainers to add/tweak features for your specific usecase.
This makes the investment in the tool a lot safer, because you can always swap out pieces that don't fit your usecase, rather than start from scratch with a new framework.
In an enterprise setting, I don't believe the cost alone will be the factor that drives the decision. It'd be weighing up the value of the framework (e.g., UI framework/programming language agnostic stack, simpler architectures, delivery speed, performance, cost of using the framework on users) against the license cost.
> Getting enterprise adoption of a front end framework is almost impossible outside of React, let alone paying for a niche one, and the "contact us" approach is a non-starter.
Two questions on this:
1. Why do you think it's impossible to get org buy-in? 2. Why do those same orgs pick frameworks like Next.js, whose full benefits can only be realized with sophisticated and paid infrastructure?
>> or just to support people who have invested many thousands of hours into making a genuinely innovative framework, and given it away
I've never seen a corporation do this even with projects that don't try and encourage like here.
If you're implying they'll only pay when they've seen the value of the product, then the non-pro part of the framework is incredibly feature-rich and can easily do that.