I've long been a fan of Architexa, and the way it makes your codebase easier to understand. Today's news that the tool is now free for individual use is exciting, giving everyone the opportunity to provide better code documentation.

Architexa plugs in to the Eclipse IDE, and allows you to create design documentation from an existing codebase. How many times has your original, well-intentioned design mutated by the release date? How many new developers have you had stumbling around your source code maze? This can solve all these problems, for free. 

On hearing the news, I spoke to Vineet Sinha, founder of Architexa, to find out more about the motivation behind this.

We have found that users really like what we do and are willing to pay for it.

We are not making the toolsuite free for teams.  We are making them free for developers because let's face it, they are busy.  We really want to remove any obstacles from them adopting our tooling.  "Free for individuals" has always been my goal, but getting it right takes time and effort which is especially  challenging when we are keeping up with customer demands.

By doing the above, we expect to get more feedback, have faster adoption, and reach more teams as a result.

This is a great model, where developers can see the benefits of Architexa for themselves, and will likely save themselves a lot of time. To access additional features, team editions can be purchased. 

Vineet is intent on making Architexa as relevant as possible for developers, so they are running a contest over the next 60 days. Try the tool out, and let the team know your thoughts and you'll be entered into a raffle for an iPad. You can leave you comments at the end of this blog post, or over at Architexa's site.