As a consultant and VAR, I often have to acquire tools for specific jobs that may be one-of's. I came to your site for a component to support a visual interface to Microsoft's very heavy duty log parser. The app was found on CodePlex at http://www.codeplex.com/visuallogparser. Needless to say, I will not be buying any kind of license for your SandDock product or any other of your products. It is a lose-lose proposition for the both of us. I will have to spend time finding another way to do what I need with log parser and you lose a potential customer, plus generating less good will.
I would speculate that you have very likely seen a drop in sales and/or market share since you took the freeware away. Now-a-days, even the big guys are giving away low end versions of their tools, Microsoft with their Express versions of their tools, Borland (oops CodeGear) with the Turbo versions of their dev environments. For pity's sake, even Oracle is doing it. IBM does it. Sun does it.
Please take a look at your business model and make it work to support free, low end versions of your products. I'm not saying to give away the farm, but that you will build more developer good will by doing the free thing rather than not. And despite the assertions of the Patent and Trademark Office, IMHO there is little to keep someone such as myself from entering your market with a free/tiered version of components that do the same sort of thing. The model does work. Look at all the commercial products which have their roots in free, open source software, and the TON of money they make on their commercial offerings. Many still support the open source versions, the stuff out there on the bleeding edge.
Former Big Iron Guy