It is quite puzzling to find out that Generics Constraint Can't Be Casted to Its Derived Type.

Let's say I have the following code:

public abstract class BaseClass
{

    public int Version
    {
        get
        {

            return 1;
        }

    }

    public string FixString
    {
        get;
        set;
    }

    public BaseClass()
    {
        FixString = "hello";
    }

    public virtual int GetBaseVersion()
    {
        return Version;
    }
}


public class DeriveClass: BaseClass
{

    public new int Version
    {
        get
        {

            return 2;
        }

    }
}

And guess what, this method will return a compilation error:

    public void FreeConversion<T>(T baseClass)
    {
        var derivedMe = (DeriveClass)baseClass;

    }

I would have to cast the baseClass to object first before I can cast it to DerivedClass.

Seems to me pretty ugly. Why this is so?