Telerik blogs
So, picking up where we left off yesterday...  Not too long ago, I received a question regarding our licensing policies, specifically section 3-1 in which we state:

"Telerik does not provide technical support for modified source code"

Which, to the customer, seemed a bit odd considering we do offer such useful tidbits in our documentation like how to inherit a RadGrid column, albeit with a disclaimer at the bottom reminding people about our support stance on modified source, which this would then fall into. This puts us into a little gray area that requires some explanation- namely, why provide info on inheriting a RadGrid column if we don't provide support for that?

Basically, the control that we deliver (in this case, RadGrid) is the control that we intend for our customers to use. All of our testing, error checking, and documentation is based upon the controls as we deliver them. Also, as our support staff includes the people from the development team who created the controls, they have an amazing knowledge of the inner workings of the controls and all aspects of them.

All that being said, we provide resources like source code and instructions for inheriting controls more for informational purposes than anything else. These help developers to see the logic and methods used in our controls to help in planning solutions and making the best use of the controls that we provide. Our support team is able to provide help with issues based on the controls that we provide, but in an instance where either the source code is modified or a control is inherited and extended beyond the original intended use, our support staff is unable to provide assistance as that goes against the areas of our license policy in regard to source code modifications and support (section 3-1).

In a nutshell, there are so many possible errors and complications that can arise from these modifications and extensions that we cannot adequately provide support for all of those scenarios, and while our support staff attempts to offer assistance for all support issues, these are cases where we cannot guarantee help. But in this case, you do have options! We have an incredibly active community forum, in which you can do a quick search to see just how much our developer community works together to solve problems like these. You can even find instances like this post in which one of our people offered an alternative to inheriting RadGrid (which would keep the project in the scope of support) as well as a link to the instructions if that solution didn't quite fit what the customer wanted.  Plus, folks from here also are known to check in on Stack Overflow, ASP.Net, and Silverlight.Net, so we're pretty in-the-know in the development community. 

So fear not!  Even if you go beyond the intended use of the controls, there are still resources at your disposal.  Plus, it never hurts to share with the community- you never know what sort of insight you'll receive back!

About the Author

Evan Hutnick

works as a Developer Evangelist for Telerik specializing in Silverlight and WPF in addition to being a Microsoft MVP for Silverlight. After years as a development enthusiast in .Net technologies, he has been able to excel in XAML development helping to provide samples and expertise in these cutting edge technologies. You can find him on Twitter @EvanHutnick.

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