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How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

• geophile 11y ago
  Will there still be a Community Edition? (Free, with reduced capabilities.)
  • masklinn 11y ago
    Yes.
    • thawkins 11y ago
      Not for phpstorm
      • masklinn 11y ago
        There has never been a community edition of phpstorm.
    • tobltobs 11y ago
      But in the future CE might stand for Crippled Edition.
  • gorohoroh 11y ago
    Yes, our free products (IntelliJ IDEA and PyCharm Community Editions, dotPeek) are not affected by these changes. They'll be available as before.
• vermooten 11y ago
  Thank god Eclipse has gotten very usable in recent years.
  • keyle 11y ago
    Really? I mean I used Eclipse for years prior to VS and IntelliJ. IntelliJ wins hands down. This pricing model though.... upsets me.
    • kisstheblade 11y ago
      I don't know how people use their ides, but I have had no problems with eclipse and feel plenty productive with it. Writing java code in my case. It has autocomplete and that's pretty much what I need... Great support with workspaces and multiple modules (I have about 50-100 "projects" in one workspace, and you can use filtered views also if needed). An it has a faster more responsive UI and better fonts thanks to eclipse's SWT, java's UI-toolkit is sluggish and horrible fonts. Also idea seemed to be indexing a whole lot of stuff the whole time... Eclipse just finds the stuff you need with no fuss indexing (it does indexing of course but it's barely noticeable)
• kuyfiuyg 11y ago
  Is there any good Java IDE for emacs?
  • logicchains 11y ago
    I'm not sure about IDEs, but if you install Evil mode you get a pretty awesome text editor.
    • throwaway999777 11y ago
      Fuck off.
      • dang 11y ago
        > Fuck off. We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the HN guidelines.
  • bdarnell 11y ago
    Last time I touched java (a year ago), malabar-mode (https://github.com/m0smith/malabar-mode https://github.com/m0smith/malabar-mode) was the most feature-rich environment for doing java in emacs. However, it couldn't cope with the complex build system for the project I was working on, so I ended up using intellij instead (if malabar-mode had worked for this project I would have preferred to stay in emacs).
  • PyComfy 11y ago
    You can integrate eclipse into emacs. http://eclim.org/ http://eclim.org/ http://www.skybert.net/emacs/java/ http://www.skybert.net/emacs/java/
    • acomjean 11y ago
      Very cool. emacs and a real a IDE, together at last.
  • gkya 11y ago
    http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/JavaDevelopmentEnvironment http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/JavaDevelopmentEnvironment Now, I've not really used Java, so I have no experience with this package.
• gortok 11y ago
  It seems likely that JetBrains moved to this model because their current revenue model doesn't allow for enough runway to allow them to make updates as needed or grow the business. So from that perspective changing to a model where they continually get money helps them stay in business. Where they 'went wrong', if you could call it that, is that they forced developers down this new path without allowing us to 'dip our toes in'. It would have been better to open this up as a separate way of paying for their products alongside the current model, and then in a year or two simply switching over.
  • teacup50 11y ago
    Where JetBrains went wrong is in spreading themselves too thin on too many development fronts, letting products like IntelliJ languish with few significant features added and far too many bugs unfixed, and then deciding the solution to a lack of effort on these products was to switch to a subscription model so that all of their customers would pay for the updates whether or not they're worth paying for.
    • WorldMaker 11y ago
      It seems to me that where JetBrains went wrong was building every language supported as a separate application. According to their announcement post the stated goal of was to deal with the customer ask to get easier discounts on multiple language products or to move from one language to another more easily. To JetBrains the solution was apparently to switch to SaaS, which kind of makes sense, but from my perspective maybe they should have just consolidated some of their product efforts?
      • aikah 11y ago
        The Ultimate version of IDEA seems to support all languages at once.
        • jasonellis 11y ago
          It does through plugins. The language-specific IDEs are updated with language features earlier than the plugins for IDEA and they have simplified project creation/management. For instance, it's a lot easier to setup a Python project and choose your interpreter/packages in PyCharm than it is in IDEA.
• jasode 11y ago
  >, and most customers upgraded every year. Is this statement actually true? Is it educated guessing or has it been substantiated by JetBrains? (Not trying to argue. Just want to know substantiated facts.)
  • gortok 11y ago
    There's no way for us to know unless Jetbrains shares their renewal percentage rate. In a similar business I was exposed to, 60% was considered pretty good. It wasn't exactly the same type of product, so I could be way off here.
  • navait 11y ago
    The article is full of unsubstantiated claims, though I agree with the author in principle.
• venomsnake 11y ago
  So once again the people getting the best deal will be the pirates :( I suppose that we are at JetBrains market saturation levels - everybody is using their IDEs, so they just don't sell as many new licences to fuel growth.
  • konradb 11y ago
    I think their all-you-can-eat subscription deal is pretty good value. I use Intellij Ultimate but I have messed around with Appcode and Rubymine in the past and wanted to give CLion a go. I remember a while ago thinking 'surely they do some all you can eat package' and finding they didn't. This has answered it. Realise that the same model doesn't work for everyone but the subscription deal for all-you-can-eat is damn good.
  • amyjess 11y ago
    > everybody is using their IDEs And I think that's a shame, because I prefer NetBeans over IntelliJ. I've used both, and IntelliJ's Maven integration is just terrible.
    • LoneWolf 11y ago
      Please elaborate, I havent used Netbeans for a while but it really sucked compared even to eclipse. Also never had any problems with maven integration on IntelliJ.
      • steve_taylor 11y ago
        Maven is a first-class project format in NetBeans, whereas IntelliJ still needs to create its own project structure and metadata. So it seems less than ideal from that perspective. But having had to use IntelliJ for a while, I'm now comfortable with its way of handling Maven. I understand why it is the way it is: IntelliJ is a multi-stack IDE, whereas Maven is a Java-specific project format. IntelliJ has a project format that works across all their IDEs (except AppCode) and IntelliJ is just an all-in-one IDE, not just a Java IDE.
      • amyjess 11y ago
• mark_l_watson 11y ago
  I have built their open source community edition, from source, and it is very serviceable. I prefer to pay for the ultimate edition but I could do my work with the open source version. Yearly subscription pricing seems OK to me, with some allowance for giving companies adequate notice to re-subscribe.
• steedsofwar 11y ago
  This isn't new, well for intelliJ at least. I bought IJ 12x, and was a little saddened when they changed to the sub model. However it's still a great tool and i prefer it over the others, therefore still use it. It just means i'm forced to use the community edition, or EAP. Loyalty is as good as the product; if another product comes along and makes my life easier i would switch.
• danieldk 11y ago
  I always hoped that one of these let's force everyone into software subscriptions-actions would become such an embarrassment that companies will think twice about doing this. Given how much I like IntelliJ (and liked JetBrains until they pulled this off), I'd be a bit sad if they would be that example. I am still hoping for a quick follow-up announcement that they have listened to their customers and decided to keep the old licensing model as-is. If not, I cannot trust them anymore. How do I know that they won't change the rules of the game again with just two month's notice? (Note: I am not principally against subscriptions, though I do think the model puts customers in a weaker position. Just offer people an alternative, or give them plenty of heads-up time.)
  • jerf 11y ago
    I'd point out that "software subscriptions" and "software keeps working even if you don't pay" can both be in place. For something like this, it's not a half-bad business relationship; the incentives are well aligned for everybody. For something as fundamental as build software, I'd be nervous about committing to anything where whether I can use the software I already have in two years is in somebody else's hands. I really want to be able to squirrel away complete build environments and know I can build the thing I sold two years ago again if I have to release a "my business may die if I don't" update. Remember, in two years, the "somebody else" may not exist to give me permission. Then what? The incentives here aren't so good if access to the software is actively being removed for non-payment... the vendor is extracting small values from their customers by forcing their customers to take hidden, but actually quite staggeringly enormous, business risks.
• jbtule 11y ago
  In the .net Environment Visual Studio and frameworks change fast enough that we are 1.5 year upgrading resharper ultimate already. I don't see this as a big issue. Pricing is appropriate and seems better for individual developers than it was prior.
• jbob2000 11y ago
  Meh, the only real issue there is the phoning home. The other issues he points out seem pretty contrived.
  • gorohoroh 11y ago
    JetBrains rep here. "Phoning home" is actually not new. We've introduced JetBrains Account as a way of authorizing a product instance (as an alternative to license keys) for a couple of years now. Current student licenses work exactly the same way, as well as a part of classroom and OS licenses AFAIK. A lot of current personal and some commercial licenses are managed through a JetBrains Account as well. With the new scheme, JetBrains Account will simply gain more usage than now, hard-coded license keys will eventually go away, but a license server option for environments that have restricted Internet connection will be provided the same as it is now. Now, there might be certain additional steps we might need to take to ensure license delivery in certain scenarios but we'll be handling this as we receive specific problem reports.
    • jbob2000 11y ago
      Thanks for the reply! It's actually not an issue for me at all, my comment was more about the legitimacy of the OP's arguments.
• ihsw 11y ago
  Looks like Atom and related packages are about to get a lot more users.
  • deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
• oneJob 11y ago
  It's my personal opinion that one only gets complaining rights if one doesn't use Gmail, one doesn't subscribe to NetFlix, one doesn't use Spotify, ad nauseum. JetBrains is making a business decision. That's what businesses do. Their current Community Edition is open-source. Anyone is free to pick up where they left off. That is an enormous contribution they've already made to the community. You make your consumer decision. They make their business decision. This is the implicit but very real relationship any customer of theirs has chosen to be in. I personally don't agree with their decision. But, I'm not running their business or working their jobs. Before going all "They're Google Reader'ing Us.", just ask yourself, do you use Gmail? Are you willing to continue their work on the Community Edition? edit: to clarify my examples. The services I referenced where chosen as examples of alternatives to options such as hosting one's own email or using existing perpetually or open-sourced licensed products (Gmail), a company that drastically revised it's product offering (NetFlix), and a company who's founder destroyed the business model of purchasing a c.d. for life by making mp3's user friendly and then went legit by moving to a SaaS model (Spotify). As others have pointed out, one can still purchase a perpetual license through November, so JetBrains is not only not stealing back the product they sold you, they are also giving you time whether you'd like to make this transition with them. If not, simply do not purchase their product in the future. To expect JetBrains to do otherwise (maintain their business model) is to tell them how to make very basic decisions about how they run their business and live their lives. That, I think, is bad. tl;dr: They didn't steal anything. Don't tell people how to live their lives.
  • danieldk 11y ago
    It's my personal opinion that one only gets complaining rights if one doesn't use Gmail, one doesn't subscribe to NetFlix, one doesn't use Spotify, ad nauseum. That does not make sense. Spotify et al. were like that from the beginning. You know what kind of deal you are getting. JetBrains is changing the rules of the game completely, with very little heads-up time, for people who might be deeply invested in their products. It's comparable to what Adobe pulled off: they knew that most people did not have a choice, so they could force it on them. Luckily, the IDE landscape is a bit more healthy, so I expect that a subset of their customers will flee to other IDEs.
• PhrosTT 11y ago
  For 600 people complaining: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3ji148/jetbrains_toolbox_monthly_yearly_subscription_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3ji148/jetbrai...
• bitserf 11y ago
  The problem I have with subscription model for my tools is this: It removes the option for me to decide to not upgrade because the improvements are not worth the cost. Note that I have been upgrading my license most every year, but chances are I'll just make do with what I have next time around. If the current pricing model isn't viable for them, I'm sorry, but it is not my problem. It's already the most I pay for any tool I use, and I have found it worth it so far, but coercion into a subscription model just doesn't work for me. Not a great move by JetBrains.
  • jasonlotito 11y ago
    > The problem I have with subscription model for my tools is this: It removes the option for me to decide to not upgrade because the improvements are not worth the cost. That's fair. But at the same time, that presents a problem they mentioned. In order to get those sales, they had to worry about big features that would get people to buy. Bug fixes and performance improvements are things people want, but it doesn't make people buy. So you are stuck: you want to make a solid product, but bug fixes don't make sales. So where do you put the effort? > If the current pricing model isn't viable for them, I'm sorry, but it is not my problem. You say that, and I know what you mean, but it is your problem in the sense that any software you pay for, you've invested time and workflow into. Moving off IntelliJ products isn't easy unless you haven't been fully utilizing their tools (at least, I can't imagine easily moving off). I'm generally wary of paying for products that I'll rely on because of reasons like this. For myself, I'm fine with the change because the value they provide is substantially higher than what they charge, and frankly, the subscription model (which again, amounts to the same price I'm paying yearly now) hopefully means less hassle when actually renewing my license.
    • mark-r 11y ago
      > bug fixes don't make sales. Has anybody ever tested that hypothesis?
      • jasonlotito 11y ago
        Haha, fair point. But anecdotally, the comments I've always seen regarding upgrades ask about features. Even here in these threads. Would be difficult to test this theory though. I've never seen software that doesn't include some level of new features in big releases. Could you convince people to pay for a normal upgrade that didn't include any new features? I seriously doubt it.
• cweagans 11y ago
  You do realize that they haven't really changed their pricing model, right? They just changed how it's presented. It's always been a subscription if you want new features in an IDE (which most people do). I pay like $100/year for PHPstorm upgrades, and it's well worth the cost given the benefits that one receives from using the software (mostly in terms of productivity). Yes, renting software is a skeezy model. Yes, they should still allow people to purchase perpetual licenses (which, for the record, you can still do until November). Yes, this could have been communicated differently and with more notice. No, it's not the end of the world. A company has to make money, and at the end of the day, I'd much rather give my money to Jetbrains than many other companies because I know they make excellent tools that facilitate my ability to produce excellent software.
  • teacup50 11y ago
    Sorry, but they have changed their pricing model; the previous model provided a perpetual license with a year of updates, and the new model is simply rental, which access terminating once you stop paying. I don't rent my tools.
    • cweagans 11y ago
      So don't. There are plenty of other tools out there that you can use. Did you previously pay the yearly fee to continue getting upgrades?
      • sgdread 11y ago
        Now you paying not for upgrades, but the fee to use. No payment - you can't use it.
        • cweagans 11y ago
          My point is, if you were paying the yearly fee before so that you can get upgrades, you were paying a subscription anyway. Yes, you could still use it if you didn't pay, but you paid. Why do you care?
• nutate 11y ago
  Community Edition is still totally awesome for what it is right?
• awjr 11y ago
  I'm going to take a wild guess and suggest this was driven by the CFO trying to provide better predictive earnings to their shareholders. It may also enable them to plan developer recruitment better but this feels very shareholder driven. Personally, Webstorm is exceptional and worth every penny.
  • masklinn 11y ago
    > Webstorm is exceptional and worth every penny. Webstorm was heavily discounted compared to the other specialised IDEs (mostly because other specialised ones included Webstorm's features, at least before AppCode and CLion) That has been rectified, Webstorm is now 99/year and completely worthless (since RubyMine, PHPStorm and PyCharm give you Webstorm + a "server" language for the same price)
    • awjr 11y ago
      "server" language? You may have heard that Javascript is doing rather well these days ;)
      • masklinn 11y ago
        And you may have tried to understand the point rather than look for places where you could land a snide comment. Alas, you chose otherwise.
        • awjr 11y ago
          Well I'm not sure why you would put "server" in quotes.
          • masklinn 11y ago
            Because they're not solely for web servers, and because as you so astutely noted javascript can be used in a server role.
• chiph 11y ago
  I think JetBrains miscalculated just how much people like the current licensing model. I liked their first model - I paid for it and just used it. The current model, with the yearly upgrade premium, I tolerated. I felt it was a scam (are they going to publish an update in the next year so I get my money's worth? Probably not) but I could deal with it. This new model doesn't work for me at all. As someone who bought his own license, used it at work, and got 3 employers to switch to it -- this doesn't feel right. I am reminded of Altova. They turned their $120 XML editor into a $999 enterprise behemoth. I haven't recommended them in over 10 years.
  • anjanb 11y ago
    I agree with all your points. I have used jetbrains products for 15 years so I feel sad that this is how they are going to lose me and other customers. I was hoping they would come with an IDE for golang and I would buy that as well. Now, this is a big disappointment.
    • aantix 11y ago
      So your license price jumps from $89 to $120/yr and now you're no longer a customer? Do you not think their tools probably make up for that $120/yr in terms of your productivity? If you struggle with Netbeans or Eclipse for an hour or two with something IntelliJ does easily, you've already paid for your license. I don't understand arguing about peanuts; pay it the trivial increase and get on with the show of making real money. No wonder why so many startups fail.
      • pixard 11y ago
        I think (for me anyway) the problem isn't the price at all. It's the fact that if you let your subscription lapse you CANNOT use the product. In my case (small business) we have months of very low activity. Now if I let my subscription lapse then I lose access to the software and it becomes more expensive since I wouldn't have the existing customer discount anymore (presumably). I would easily pay double what I'm paying now _but_ on the existing scheme where I can upgrade when I want to, not when I'm forced to.
• nadams 11y ago
  > I've seen companies who forget to renew their licenses promptly or who have long and convoluted processes to approve the expenditure. I guess, under the new model, development grinds to a halt until the purchase goes through. That sounds like a problem with the company practices and policies and not Jetbrains. I'm pretty sure that would affect other things in the company as well (such as stalling to pay an internet bill or something).
• fridek 11y ago
  It's hard to make an argument that loyal customers are lost. Don't they by definition renew the license every year anyway? If not, still no one is lost - existing licenses don't magically expire. This change affects only potential new customers who are not renewing every year for some reason.
  • danieldk 11y ago
    Note that the title says 'customer loyalty'. I think IntelliJ et al. became popular through word of mouth of developers (that's how I started using IntelliJ and I recommended it to many others). If those developers go from 'IntelliJ is great and the JetBrains people rock' to 'IntelliJ may be great, but JetBrains is scammy', it may be bad for growth. Of course, one can assume that they calculated in some protests + losing customers.
  • masklinn 11y ago
    > If not, still no one is lost - existing licenses don't magically expire. Converted and new ones do, so previously loyal customers who don't want to lose their perpetual license… can't upgrade their editor ever again.
  • izacus 11y ago
    There's a significant attitude difference when you pay for upgrade every year because the product is improving or when you have to pay so the company doesn't pull the killswitch in your tooling.
• edpichler 11y ago
  At least it's no so expensive.
  • masklinn 11y ago
    * IDEA was 200 + 99/year, new license is 149/year (more expensive from year 3) * PyCharm, RubyMine, PhpStorm, AppCode and CLion were 99 + 59/year, new license is 99/year (more expensive from year 2) * WebStorm was 49 + 29/year, new license is 99/year (more expensive from year 1) Things have gotten significantly more expensive across the board, and if you don't need the new version or can't pay for it… you lose your IDE. The new licenses are absolutely terrible for holders of individual licenses.
  • ageektrapped 11y ago
    I use a lot of Jetbrains' IDEs and have for years: ReSharpe, dotCover, etc., WebStorm, PHPStorm. I also have Rubymine but probably won't need it after the license expires. I use the first three often enough that I'd keep renewing the license to keep up with versions. The use-it-all yearly price is cheaper, plus I can try their other IDEs. (Looking at you AppCode!) Seems like a win to me. I heard about the change through the OP, which filled me with dread. Then I went to their website, which filled me with relief. I've always found their IDEs worth the price.
• yodasan 11y ago
  The author claims that indie developers will be hit who let their licenses lapse due to limited income as well as forgetful corporations who forget to renew. I always found the reasons for these issues was because everyone's licenses expire at different times and it was hard to track (even with budgeting as an indie developer). If it is moved to a monthly service model, I think these issues would actually improve.
• mkozlows 11y ago
  I think the critics are missing one huge benefit: Most of their licenses are bought by companies. A company that buys a perpetual license now has no reason to upgrade unless the developers complain and prod; a company that buys a SaaS subscription enables its devs to upgrade to the newest versions as quickly as they want. For most of JetBrains actual corporate users, the upshot of this is that they'll never need to bug their managers to buy the new version, or suffer on years-old versions because of corporate inertia. That's a big win.
  • teacup50 11y ago
    As an owner of a company, business continuity-destroying dependencies on SaaS is the opposite of a big win.
    • thawkins 11y ago
      Nope, we just had to shut down our corporate evaluation of phpstorm because our org does not allow us to purchase locked in products with shut off mechanisms.
      • calgoo 11y ago
        That place actually sound like a nice place to work :) Im used to getting: "We need a 5 figure support contract from one of these 5 vendors".
  • tobltobs 11y ago
    The most developers will never need to bug their managers because a subscription based solution is a no go for the financial department anyway. Corporations do like getting blackmailed as much as a indie developer.
    • acdha 11y ago
      Most of the large organizations I've dealt with are fine with this because they like having someone to call for problems. “subscription” is the same as “support contract” for the accountants and that's something they're very used to: it converts an unknown risk of an expensive outage into a predictable annual expense.
• GordonS 11y ago
  For ReSharper users, some decent open source alternatives are Refactoring Essentials (previously called NR6Pack) and Code Cracker: http://vsrefactoringessentials.com http://vsrefactoringessentials.com https://github.com/code-cracker/code-cracker https://github.com/code-cracker/code-cracker
• alt_f4 11y ago
  Yet another reason for me to stick with Eclipse. When will people realise that true & complete OSS is the only answer.
  • CydeWeys 11y ago
    I get burned by proprietary software way more often than I do by Free Software.
  • joshstrange 11y ago
    When it stops being a massive PITA to use... I HATE Eclipse, it's a massively bloated POS IMHO and I wouldn't touch it with a 10' pole. Eclipse is what drove me FAR away from IDE's until a friend recommended JetBrains to me and I found how awesome it was. OSS fanatics drive me up a wall. I don't have unlimited amounts of time to customise something a ton just to make it useable. I'm not going to make my life harder on purpose so that I can sit on my high horse. I want to get things done not be constantly futzing around with display drivers, font rendering, icon sets, endless pages of customization, etc. Do you have full control in OSS? Yes, but the defaults normally suck. I want something that takes me to 80-90% on day 1, I don't care if I can take it to 100% in OSS (it normally starts at 20% at best), it's simply not worth my time. Now given 2 products, one closed and one OSS that perform equally or close to equally well out of the box I will lean towards OSS but I'm not going to go out of my way to use it just so I can tout my neck-bearded-ness. Money = Time and I'm not interested in wasting the "non-renewable" one of the two. Note: none of this applies to servers, linux is the only thing I'd ever consider using on a server. This is primarily aimed at OSS programs and OS's (Open Office or whatever they are calling it now, Eclipse, Linux on the desktop, etc)
    • alt_f4 11y ago
      Doing professional Java dev with Eclipse since '10, never had any serious issues with Eclipse. IMHO, the biggest Eclipse-related issues I've had were with dodgy 3rd party plugins. I find that people who "HATE" Eclipse passionately often don't understand how to use it properly. E.g... why is it taking a long time to build? Well, you enabled "Build automatically" in the project settings of your 900KLOC project... Anyway, I've had this debate many times, I have no interest in having it again. I am just happy Eclipse works well for my needs, so I have no reason to worry about IntelliJ, SaaS licensing or whatever. I would just encourage people who are unhappy about the changes to give Eclipse another shot -- who knows, maybe you will like it the second time around.
• odonnellryan 11y ago
  I'd be surprised if we don't get a good response from them out of this.
• thisisandyok 11y ago
  They've posted a response on their blog: "We announced a new subscription licensing model and JetBrains Toolbox yesterday. We want you to rest assured that we are listening. Your comments, questions and concerns are not falling on deaf ears. We will act on this feedback." http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2015/09/04/we-are-listening/ http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2015/09/04/we-are-listening/
  • LoneWolf 11y ago
    I really hope they do act, I love their products but this new subscription model annoys me.
    • gedy 11y ago
      Thing is - their current model was sort of a dumb semi-forced yearly upgrade anyways. "Oh WebStorm 8 is out already, didn't we just buy 7?" etc.
      • LoneWolf 11y ago
        True, and I failed to explain myself properly, I have no issues with the price, only with the fact that if I stop paying I can no longer use the product, not even in the version it was when I stopped paying, but since they say that are listening to the feedback maybe there will be some compromise on that.
• mikeash 11y ago
  What bugs me about this is when I asked them about the change on Twitter and they kept trying to blow smoke up my butt about how it's better for everyone. Their first response was that it's cheaper than before. Except it's not. Did they think I wouldn't actually go look at the prices? Then they said it's better because you can jump in and out at will. Only need Product X for a month? Only pay for a month. Which is fine, except I've never heard of a developer who would do that. This move wouldn't bug me so much if they were just honest about it. If you're doing it because you need the money or it makes your life easier or whatever, then fine. I don't like it even so, but I could deal with it. But when you try to convince me it's better for me, while treating me like a fool, I start to have a major problem with the whole thing.
  • stoshe 11y ago
    A typical move to subscription based pricing LOWERS costs to the consumer, but the company gets the benefit of more predictable recurring revenues. That makes the pricing JetBrains puts out a little bit of a head-scratcher.
    • acveilleux 11y ago
      Starting from zero, their pricing is lower over a set number of year. They got rid of the initial "hump" and in turn made the annual amount higher. I didn't look too closely but I guess the cost evens out over a 3-4 year subscription span. For a business this is actually going to simplify accounting I would think. It's no longer a cap-ex with a maintenance fee, it's just rental so all pre-tax. My guess is that overall their spreadsheeting makes this even out based on how customers have been paying. The fringe bits (loss of permanence, ability to install a home copy) will disproportionately hurt solo/small business folks and hobbyists. The very people that have been their champion getting their software into enterprise dev teams. I don't understand why they don't go to the rental model with optional one-time permanent license add-on. So like hypothetically 100$/year rental and a 100$ supplement for permanent license. Basically option into the current deal. They can even make the sum total greater then it used to be. Like 120$/year rental + 100$ permanent license supplement.
• chrislgrigg 11y ago
  For companies managing the licenses for their employees, this is a great change. It's especially true for those who have a few primary languages but occasionally get contracts or have projects in other languages. For those with staff sizes in flux -- employees coming and going, contractors in and out, interns on board for part of the year -- only being responsible for the number of seats actively in use is extremely helpful, too. Managing licenses for teams is time-consuming and frustrating. When I worked in the MSP world, convincing our clients (for whom we were essentially the IT department) that they had to buy an extra seat or upgrade everyone license or reminding them that, "No, you upgraded Sally to v5 but the Intern's system has last year's v4 license, and you have to shell out $X00 right now or they can't work" was a _constant_ issue. Creative Cloud and Office 360 made everything better, I expect this to have the same effect for dev teams.
  • softawre 11y ago
    You can do this already though. Right now, my team has a license server URI they type into their editor, and when we're using the software it grabs a license slot from the server. If that employee left the company they just wouldn't use the license anymore and there's no cleanup work.
• navls 11y ago
  vim remains free and free
• ohitsdom 11y ago
  I think Resharper is in trouble. This licensing change, the new "refactoring" features in Visual Studio 2015, and the lower barrier for new tools to be created due to Roslyn are all going to have an impact.
• oldmanjay 11y ago
  Loyalty to a corporation is for assholes.
• aikah 11y ago
  To be fair , it worked quite well for Adobe products ( most of them are now using a monthly subscription scheme ) despite all the dissatisfaction voiced by some customers at first. It is both good for Adobe and good for the competition. In fact allowed some challengers to be profitable when everybody pirated Photoshop before as 95% of people using it only took advantage of 1% of Photoshop features. It will be a good opportunity for alternative products such as Eclipse or Netbeans to evolve and get better.
  • malka 11y ago
    Adobe photoshop has pretty much a monopoly. IDEs do not.
  • estefan 11y ago
    It's been good news for Serif. I've bought a grand total of 4 non-games on my Mac, Serif's Affinity Photo & Designer being 2 of them so I didn't have to pay Adobe for things I'd only use intermittently (Intellij being a third).
  • glenndebacker 11y ago
    The reason why it works well for Autodesk and Adobe is the fact that they have a defacto monopoly in their fields. My boss doesn't like the fact that they have a subscription scheme but we have one for Adobe Cloud because there isn't another way. That is not the case for an IDE. I really like PyCharm and PHPStorm but I can (and also would) drop them in a heartbeat. You will always find some (edge) case who can profit from these kind of schemes - an amateur photographer for example with Adobe CC or somebody who uses all the jetbrain tools - but there are a lot of cases that are a different and really don't have any benefits of using SAAS. In Flanders we have a saying that goes a bit like this: "all small things makes on big thing". The personal problem that I have is that if I would add all those "inexpensive" subscriptions of services it will add up very fast to a point that it is becoming really expensive. I don't buy all software in a single month or can even wait for upgrading if an older version is good enough for me, with SAASS that is not the case. But I have the same opinion that this race to convert all commercial software to SAAS will be beneficial for OSS alternatives. Personally I would even go as far as donating (or crowdfund) (for the same amount that I would give to jetbrains) to an OSS project, if that means that I would get an alternative that I don't need to "rent".
• 27182818284 11y ago
  Everyone I've talked to wanted a slight pricing model change with JetBrains, myself included, but nobody wanted a subscription service. It is just that, often you find yourself wanting PHPStorm, and PyCharms, but that's it. A simple buy one-full-price-half-off-second scheme would have got people like me to say, "yeah sure, let's buy up PyCharms this weekend. Why not?"
  • timv 11y ago
    And the thing is, they didn't even solve the issue people wanted. Yes, you can buy everything for US$19.90 per month. Or you can buy PHPStorm+PyCharm for ($7.90+$7.90) = $15.80 So, under the new model, it's still cheaper to just buy two full-price licenses. There's no discount for the 2nd product.
• azurelogic 11y ago
  Well, looks like I'll be doing some upgrade purchases very soon...
• Rezo 11y ago
  I purchase a lot of commercial IntelliJ/WebStorm licenses for my company. Previously, the cost was $499/y for new employees, $299/y for existing employees. Now it looks like it will be a flat $319/y for everyone. Eh, I'm OK with that. Now there's also upfront volume discounts, whereas previously you had to talk to sales. In some ways it's simpler for me, and the pricing is in line with other per-dev SaaS costs we have. Consider what you pay for a software Engineer and the productivity gains, personally it's a no-brainer for me. It's the best Java, Scala, Python, JavaScript etc. IDE by far. With this change, I hope JetBrains takes the opportunity to switch from the big-bang yearly releases to just a continuous stream of improvements. In some ways they've already been moving in the this direction, they've added some pretty great improvements to point releases this year (React/JSX, TypeScript etc. comes to mind). This will eliminate release timing anxiety on both sides (customers optimizing when the best time to buy is, and JetBrains deciding if releasing major new functionality now vs in the next big-bang release), and lets the company ship improvements as fast as possible.
• phn 11y ago
  The whole post feels like someone took away the "free lunch". C'mon, we can understand the need to find a business model that works, right? I am having a hard time believing that they're changing just for the heck of it. Besides, They have a free version of IntelliJ, making the ultimate edition and other languages (for which there are probably more, and free, alternatives) support as "premium". If their tools are that good, maybe they're worth the money and $119 per year sounds pretty much like peanuts for anyone that is trying to make money.
• jrs235 11y ago
  This isn't even Software-as-a-Service. Most companies that offer SaaS are HOSTING the software and thus incurring ongoing monthly costs. The Service part is that the purchaser doesn't have to install the software on their own machines, pay for nor update servers, etc. Selling rights to use [but not own] software on a monthly basis should be called RtpS - Rent-to-pwned-Software (cause you're pwned, you'll never own it)
  • Rezo 11y ago
    JetBrains produces a continuous stream of improvements to all of their tools, previously they would have to artificially hold some of the bigger changes back to justify the next big yearly version number increase. With subscriptions, this is no longer necessary, everyone can have the latest and greatest right away. And I do hope the next logical step is to offer an optional fully hosted service that has feature parity with something like WebStorm. There's cloud IDEs out there, but they're lacking when compared to JetBrain's tools.
    • jrs235 11y ago
      "previously they would have to artificially hold some of the bigger changes back to justify the next big yearly version number increase" I get that. Perhaps they should or could have just sold the current latest version as is for a bit less and then whenever the next big release comes out offer a prorated upgrade amount to those that feel the new features are worth the additional upgrade amount. Their model, withholding features so they could package them into a huge update, was hurting themselves and their customers. What's to say they don't start pulling IntelliJ with other/more products? That is, to stop or slow down development/improvements and now milk a cash cow? Clarification: They could have sold a working perpetual license without the 1 year of upgrades. When they have an upgrade they have an prorated upgrade path/cost based on when you purchased your current license/product.
    • toyg 11y ago
      Yeah, but the "right" way to do it is to disable updates on license expiration, not just turn off a product you might have paid for since 2010. Maybe the best thing to do would be an initial payment worth, say, 6 months, followed by monthly renewals; if the renewal does not go through, updates stop. This would be closer to the current model, but would still switch most revenue (renewals) to the SaaS model.
• invaliduser 11y ago
  As someone managing a small software edition company and selling yearly subscription licenses, I can totally get their business decision. Otherwise, you get the "Microsoft Word 97" effect, when people still use the same old software for 15 years, never upgrade, and complain about your software. Having a recurring revenue is the best way to be able to manage a company, because it gives you a better view for your next years' budgets, and you can more easily plan investment and hirings. What is wrong, is probably how jetbrain seems to change their pricing and businell model far too often, lacking direction, and pretending it's for the customers (it's only very indirectly for the customers benefit). Besides, I wouldn't mind paying whatever they want if they would just improve their release quality so that I don't get afraid of breaking my project everytime I update.
• MichaelGG 11y ago
  Microsoft recently did the same thing, requiring you to sign in with a Microsoft Account to continually re-activate Visual Studio (90 days, I think). So now, even with an MSDN sub, after it expires, you don't get the software. Rather significant change. Though, with BizSpark and other programs it will probably only impact larger companies. Plus when customers view changes like this as unfair or unethical, they suddenly find themselves caring a lot less about using a disassembler and changing some jumps.
• gdulli 11y ago
  Personally, they had lost my goodwill already with their old upgrade policy. If you bought a license on 01/2014, it expired on 12/2014, and you didn't need the product again until 04/2015, the upgrade you purchase in April begins on 01/2015, retroactively beginning after the end of the previous license. So you don't get the full 12 months they charge you for. When I realized that it was the end of my support for them.
  • Latty 11y ago
    Why would it work another way? You are paying to extend your old license, of course it carries on from when it finished. If you want a year from the present moment, that's not an extension, it's a new purchase. Otherwise, no one would extend until after a new release came out once it ended.
    • gdulli 11y ago
      > Why would it work another way? Because I shouldn't have to retroactively pay for a period I didn't use a product and the natural thing for me to assume was my status as a previous customer/license holder was what enabled me to an upgrade with the advertised "year's" worth of upgrades? Because that's how upgrade licenses work for other software products? (Windows/Office, other stuff I've used.) They can define a license however they want, it's just up to me whether I find it worthwhile, and I didn't. But at least in those days I had the option of continuing to use the older version after it expired.
      • Latty 11y ago
        So you'd rather they packaged all the updates into big yearly versions you paid for all at once, rather than getting things as they are done? That sucks. If you still want updates as they come, either they are free if you own the version (in which case, you feel cheated if you buy a version then a new one comes out soon after), meaning people will avoid buying the product until the new version comes out. With the year of upgrades included, it works. Now, in your case, you want to have your cake and eat it too - you still benefit from the upgrades the software got while you were not using it. You were not paying for using the software (that's the new model), you were paying to receive updates, so you either pay continuously for them at a reduced price, or pay for a new year when it runs out. In fact, what is kind of crazy is what you are saying is you only want to pay for the software while you are using it, which is exactly the new model. You want to use the version you have forever, get all the updates, and also not pay when you don't use it. How is that going to be a sane business model from the other side? Hey, sure, it's not worth it for you - that's your call, but what business model would actually be good enough for your standards?
• zeveb 11y ago
  What I don't get is why a developer would ever use proprietary software in the first place. I code—it's what I do. I want to tools to be excellent, certainly, and I don't want to have to spend a lot of time fixing them where they aren't, but I want to be able to improve them for my use cases. Who else in the world is as capable at knowing what I need as…me? If you use proprietary software, you're at the mercy of the vendor for features and, as this shows, for pricing and pricing model changes.
  • progmal1 11y ago
    You are right about being at the mercy, but I have not used free software as good as the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE for development.
    • dfox 11y ago
      I've heard many people say exactly that (or even that VS is simply the best IDE). I somehow fail to see why would anyone say that. The whole solution/project model seems to be optimized for something that does not make much sense to me. The UI is mostly unusable on small screens. Integrated editor feels somewhat weird to me (I'm probably too addicted to emacs' electric-indent, but even then). Thus I may see some reason to use VS for .NET projects (VS being the "native" IDE), but I completely fail to see why one would use VS for C/C++ (which is even exaggerated by various quirks of MS's compiler, like not supporting C99 and different versions of stdlib that sometimes can be used at same time and sometimes can't).
      • progmal1 11y ago
        For me, the small screen is not an issue, because I typically develop on as much screen as I can muster. As far as the editor, there are some good attempts at code completion from other systems, but I have not found one nearly as good as Intellisense. That is coupled with the jump to definition and declaration. Also, the integrated debugging and some of the edit and continue functionality is amazing.
      • andylei 11y ago
• hoopism 11y ago
  In the previous thread on the announcement I expressed some concerns (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10165919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10165919). An employee responded: "I see this is turning into a conspiracy theory ) Fortunately, there's a little thing called competition that prevents raising rates at will without facing the consequences, and JetBrains is no exception: we're no monopoly" So the message first was "We did this for YOU!" and then quickly became "Hey! You can always go elsewhere..." Doesn't sound like something they did for my benefit.
  • Latty 11y ago
    That's misinterpreting the response - he was saying that they were not going to jack up prices arbitrarily. 'You can always go elsewhere' vs 'We aren't aiming to screw you over - you can always go elsewhere.' - there is a big difference.
    • hoopism 11y ago
      Fair enough. Both of those interpretations are a very different message from "Look at the nice thing we did for you"... which was my point.
  • toyg 11y ago
    A lot of JetBrains employees speak English as a second language, and can come off a bit too harsh and direct at times, so you have to give them some leeway when trying to read between the lines. Just... never trust a business that says "we're doing this for you, beloved customers". They are not. Even if they did it to make you happy, it would simply mean they profit from your happiness in some way. A business does things to make a profit and expand, nothing else. JetBrains are doing this because they feel they have to, likely because of cashflow constraints; everything else is just corporate doublespeak.
• radicalbyte 11y ago
  It looks like they're going to review the changes: http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2015/09/04/we-are-listening http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2015/09/04/we-are-listening Personally I would find the pricing more reasonable if the "individual developer" licenses could be used by small businesses and freelancers.
• trebor 11y ago
  My first reaction to this is gritting my teeth. But I went and looked and did the math. And I noticed that current users with a perpetual license (the "old" licensing model) can upgrade to the new pricing for the old renewal cost. EG: PHPStorm renewal $49 (personal) PHPStorm SaaS $49/year (from existing license, doesn't change) PHPStorm SaaS $79/year (promo) PHPStorm SaaS $99/year (after Jan 31st 2016) > Yearly plan special offer for customers who have purchased a perpetual license. Offer to be redeemed no later than Jan 1, 2017. For the terms of that upgrade: https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/204249752-What-constitutes-an-Existing-Customer-Discount- https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/204249752-What... > 1. The offer is available to customers with or without upgrade subscriptions regardless of the subscription status, provided a customer switches their existing licenses to the new model before January 1, 2017 > 2. The offer only applies to switching existing licenses to the new model. Purchases for additional users will fall under the standard pricing > 3. Once the offer is used, the special price is available indefinitely until payments are canceled or paused. Emphasis mine. Looks like an irritating change, perhaps, but for existing customers you can lock your price in at its current renewal rate for the smaller products. The downside is that you will be renewing yearly, because if you pause the payment your rate might change.
• cool-RR 11y ago
  I see a lot of whining in this thread. If you think that an increase of $100/year in the price of a tool that you use every day, for, say, at least 5 hours daily as part of your job as software developer as a meaningful price increase, than the cost of your IDE is not close to being your biggest problem. Even taxi drivers invest more money than software developers in the tools that they use every day, and software developers make quite a bit more money than taxi drivers.
  • malka 11y ago
    The price is not the problem. I simply do not want to rent the tools I use. I want to buy them.
    • cool-RR 11y ago
      It's absolutely about the price. If I told you you need to rent them, but the price for renting for the next 15 years is negligible, I don't think you'd have a problem with renting them. Now our only disagreement is on what constitutes "negligible".
      • Daishiman 11y ago
        No it isn't. I would pay twice as much as I did for PyCharm, but I want software that I can control which doesn't phone home to the mothership to see if I have the privilege of being able to use it for that month. I don't want to open the travel laptop I keep stored for when I'm away from home in an airplane or the middle of nowhere and be interrupted because I can't contact a licensing server or whatever such bullshit. If they want to raise prices, that's fine. But renting tools that are not hosted on the web, for myself and lot of other people, is just a big no-no.
        • cool-RR 11y ago
          I take your point regarding phoning home. I also think that's a problem. But really, you can't blame software providers. In the old days they'd all do the one-off purchasing model, and then they would all starve to death because people don't want to pay for software. So it's no wonder they're going for a model which is actually proven to work, which is a subscription.
• dec0dedab0de 11y ago
  I'll be renewing PyCharm this week, but will likely start brushing up on Eclipse/PyDev for next year. I find the idea of software disabling itself disgusting.
• jasonellis 11y ago
  As someone who jumps between PHP, JavaScript, Python, and a tiny bit of Ruby, I have been using IntelliJ so that I don't have to buy and upgrade multiple IDEs each year. I really miss the simplified project management of the specialized IDEs. I would gladly pay $149/year for their "All Products" package (maybe even the $199). Unfortunately, there are a few dealbreakers with their proposed model that will have me re-evaluating my development environment: 1) Losing the grandfathered pricing if my subscription lapses. I can swallow paying $149/year for the All Products and would do so, but I don't want to feel like a hostage where I'm stuck paying more if I take a month off of using the IDE. 2) $149/year is pretty reasonable, $199/year a little tougher to swallow, $249/year is a no-go. 3) As mentioned, I made a $200 investment in an IntelliJ license with the expectation that I would upgrade each year at $100. Now I'm forced to convert my existing perpetual license into a subscription where I'm held hostage to keep the lower price or I lose access to my product if I cancel the subscription after converting the license. 4) Losing access to the software if my subscription lapses. If the prices were more reasonable (like those of the grandfathered prices, but permanent without the hostage situation) then I could deal with the fact that I need to pay to play. But I feel like we're paying a premium price (albeit for good products). I like the idea others have floated of getting a perpetual license after having paid for a full year subscription.
• rebootthesystem 11y ago
  We use PyCharm and love it. Could we do without it? Yes, of course. The tool makes a number of things more convenient but it isn't indispensable. That said, I'd hate to see it go. One thing that has always bothered me about JetBrains is the "personality" of their support. It is isn't good. We haven't needed a lot of it, maybe 2 or 3 incidents since PyCharm came out (we adopted right away). Yet, there's a bothersome lag in support (I am not talking about international time zones) as well as a lack of quality. It's almost --but not quite-- condescending in feel. I do understand there might be language and cultural differences at play here. I also have experience with German companies (not just software). Their approach to customer service can be very dry and very different from what you might experience in the US. I am guessing the Czech Republic might be similar. I know these are generalizations that could be way off base. In the case of JetBrains, if the product was not good we would have stopped using them purely based on the substandard support. As far as paying monthly. No. Thanks. I want my software to work and work reliably. If I chose not to upgrade for a year or two, these tools need to work. A monthly plan with 30 day call-the-mothership is a non-starter for me. I will not, ever, buy into something like that for my business. I want less overhead, not more. And I don't want a situation where if things are tight for a few months we lose half of our tools. Buying into something like that would be a really dumb decision on the part of a business owner or manager. I look at something like MS Office. We purchased licenses back in 2007. We have not needed any of the new features. And so, our 15 or so licenses work just fine for what we need to do and we do not need to spend another dime to use the software. From a business perspective that is the right way to use tools and the right way to make purchases. You do not want to bleed money on a regular basis for software updates you don't need or updates that don't make enough of a material impact to justify their cost. Anyhow, I hope JetBrains reconsiders. We have been looking at some of their other products but will not even consider them if they are converted to monthly subscription products. If they insist on taking this approach I suspect products like SublimeText will see a boost in adoption. Yes, not the same thing, but not the end of the world and it is a really, really good product with a very friendly license.
• foobarbecue 11y ago
  They gave me a free version of WebStorm because I'm a hobbyist open source developer. I love it, but I'm obviously not going to pay $80 a year. Does anyone know if they're going to continue having some kind of free option for non-corporate use?
  • hhariri 11y ago
    We've never had a free option for non-corporate users. We provide free licenses for Students, OSS projects and certain other groups. In addition, we give discounts of 50% for start-ups. All of that will continue.
    • foobarbecue 11y ago
      I'm a student with an OSS project, so that's good to hear. As long as you have this great policy about OSS, I can't complain!
• kailuowang 11y ago
  JetBrian used to have to improve the product significantly every major release so that people would pay for the new version. Just want to point out that by changing to the new subscription model, they no longer have that drive. Of course there are still other reasons for innovating their product, it's just one less.
  • orangecat 11y ago
    Right. In an alternate world where you had to pay Intel $20/month or they'd brick your CPU, I'd expect their rate of improvements to be much lower.
  • timrichard 11y ago
    Hmm, time will tell. I've been using IDEA since 2008, but switched to WebStorm a couple of years ago because I wanted to get the new JS features and extensions sooner (and didn't need the Java Enterprise bits). As someone who upgrades WebStorm within an hour of a new version being released, I'm hoping the new subscription model will mean they push out improvements whenever they're ready, rather than waiting for a major release to showcase. Totally understand the angst on here about the IDE not working if you cancel your subscription, but I guess I'm already in that mindset from using services like Linode and BrowserStack. As a serial upgrader, the WebStorm subscription price looks okay. Over the years, I've considered the IDE more of a co-worker than a tool (should credit Hector the Inspector as a great Wingman). If you're billing for your hours I still think the product is a no-brainer, but understand this would be a frustrating development for a more casual user.
• davexunit 11y ago
  At this I'd like to remind folks that Emacs has been around for over 3 decades and isn't going anywhere. Don't trust a single company with your most essential tools.
  • frik 11y ago
    That's why I prefer open source tools. JetBrains IDEA Community Edition IDE is open source, someone should fork it and add the various language plugins (many of them are open source too).
• Permit 11y ago
  I wonder if we're only getting to see one side of the issue here. How does enterprise react to changes like this? Could JetBrains perhaps compromise: Offer the current licensing for individual/independent developers, but the subscription model for enterprise licenses? Businesses are more likely to consume multiple products than an indie developer. What do you guys think?
• silvestrov 11y ago
  Polishing and bug fixes cost money, but nobody wants to pay for that. People only want to pay for new shiny features. If IntelliJ doesn't get money because developers think "old version is good enough for me", then there is no money for bug fixing and for keeping the product alive. It would end up as abandonware like most apps on the iPhone App Store. I'd guess the IDE have now reached this "fully featured" milestone where most developers don't care to upgrade. So IntelliJ has to switch to a subscription model to survive. So we users have the choice between paying a subscription or having the IDE end up as unmaintained software due to lack of funds. IntelliJ can't put out a new paid "version 15" which has bug-fixes only. People would be unhappy about that too. I feel that the core IDE has degraded in quality over the past years because the releases were feature-driven, and I'd be happy to see IntelliJ refocus on quality instead of quantity.
  • jrs235 11y ago
    "Polishing and bug fixes cost money" and should be factored into cost of development and price of the product...
  • joesmo 11y ago
    "I feel that the core IDE has degraded in quality over the past years because the releases were feature-driven, and I'd be happy to see IntelliJ refocus on quality instead of quantity." I couldn't agree more. The latest versions have a ton of bugs that were not present before. Some of the IDEs are totally unusable for certain tasks like debugging. I don't think they will focus on fixing bugs and they haven't introduced any great features, IMO, in years.
  • ceejayoz 11y ago
    > Polishing and bug fixes cost money, but nobody wants to pay for that. You pay for that when you buy the product - it comes with a year of updates.
    • silvestrov 11y ago
      I want more than a year because: 1) New OS releases might require fixes to IDEA's embedded JVM. 2) There's still a lot of bugs left after the first year. The ONLY reason that I have bought the past 2 updates is to get bugs fixed, but so far it has been for the worse. A company can't live forever on one-time payments. It needs a continuing income, otherwise the most sensible business decision is to close shop.
• justabystander 11y ago
  Their "subscription" model was basically a year of small issue maintenance and 1-2 major versions. They spent more effort expanding into new markets than they did maintaining and improving existing tools. I don't really anticipate them spending any more time on tool improvement despite the cash grab. I don't like companies that hold my development process hostage or treat me like a serf. I get that they want to stop maintaining old versions. But allowing people access to the full range of builds within their subscription (with maybe a slight exception of providing the next "stable" build after expiration) and some contract lingo should cover that. Rental has its usage, but it's not for everyone.
• lewisl9029 11y ago
  That's really too bad. I actually used and liked WebStorm at one point. I've since switched to Atom, but I still occasionally miss some of the more advanced refactoring and navigation features that indexing and static analysis made possible. Every time JetBrains released a new version of WebStorm I usually try to take a thorough look through the release notes and sometimes become tempted to give it another try. But this new subscription model has managed to completely kill any enthusiasm I had left for WebStorm and other JetBrains products. As a side note, I really hope this doesn't mean Cursive is going to have to switch to the same subscription model.
• steve_taylor 11y ago
  This was inevitable. Businesses want month-to-month licensing and now I expect JetBrains will see solid growth driven by their business customers. I would rather see a cashed-up JetBrains acquire - let's say - Xamarin than the opposite outcome, which would be an unmitigated disaster.
• joesmo 11y ago
  Wow. This is terrible. I'm a user of a few of their products (PHPStorm, PyCharm, IDEA, and RubyMine), two of which I've paid for and gotten upgrades for in the past on a fairly regular basis. I've extolled Jetbrains and praised the to such great lengths you'd think I was an evangelist for them. But now, it seems like it's time yet again (something I though was over after discovering Jetbrains) to find a proper IDE. Their products have been going down in quality. In the latest PHPStorm for example, I've had serious problems with the debugger not working and it rewriting my code to put many lines into one (fun!). Jetbrains hasn't released a new feature that I use on a constant basis for two major versions (multi-cursor is debatable, but certainly not a daily-basis feature). I seriously regret upgrading PHPStorm simply because I wasted $129 on a product that's worse than the previous version in every single way. I asked, but was not offered a refund. Not only that, but prices have already doubled in the last couple of years, with new versions being $200 instead of $100 as they used to be (and sometimes they'd have discounts like the End of The World Sale in 2012 when they were selling PyCharm for $25 and upgrades for $12). Jetbrains, IMO, is close to failing to provide quality software and now we get this insanity. The only thing I can hope for is that someone takes this great platform and start writing plugins for these languages that are better than Jetbrains (was hard in the past but shouldn't be so now and in the future) or creates another IDE platform (Eclipse need not apply).
• agentgt 11y ago
  Ironically I just switched back to Eclipse Mars from Intellij. Intellij is an awesome product and for certain development environments it hands down beats Eclipse... but if your just coding in a JVM language (Java, Scala..) Eclipse Mars is pretty decent. For me It really was never the features that made me want to use Intellij but the simple fact that shit never seems to get fixed in Eclipse version after version. Eclipse Mars is better than previous versions but there are still ancient bugs: Mac OSX scrolling: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=366471 https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=366471 Font Line Height (thank you Atom for supporting this) https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=26765 https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=26765 I have like 10 more bugs that I wish I could pay to have fixed. Intellij had this problem too (but lesser) and I really wish a company had some sort of pricing option to have certain bugs/features fast tracked. Eclipse takes donations and Intellij purchaes but you can't specifically say hey I will give you $1000 if you just fix xyz bug/feature. I know there are services that do this on opensource projects... I just wish that companies did it as well. Speaking of Atom I just created an Eclipse Color theme that looks like One Dark syntax https://gist.github.com/agentgt/fcaf75eb8acf92e08926 https://gist.github.com/agentgt/fcaf75eb8acf92e08926 . Combined with the Dark widget theme (yes Mars seems to have made this better) it really looks pretty decent on Mac. Its nice because I use Atom for frontend work so I have consistency theme wise.
  • mdaniel 11y ago
    I have like 10 more bugs that I wish I could pay to have fixed. Are you aware of Bountysource? https://www.bountysource.com/ https://www.bountysource.com/ While I believe the audience size for it isn't super large, it's also conceivable that you could post a link to the Bountysource as a comment on the Bugzilla issue, at which point your incentive becomes more visible. I don't know if you were just using a number as an example, but $1000 will likely get you some real traction on a bug - provided, of course, that the upstream project (Eclipse, in this case) will accept the work.
    • agentgt 11y ago
      I'll try bountysource for sure but others have tried (with I believe other bounty services and in some cases paypal) and for some reason have not gotten traction. In fact one of the bugs I linked to (mac scrolling bug) some one offered a bounty but the bounty links seems to have disappeared. I'm not sure if the Eclipse foundation has a policy against it. I would imagine they would prefer you donate instead. It would be interesting if there were some sort of custom white label bounty services for organizations like Apache and Eclipse where contributions are complicated in terms of regulations, licensing, donating, consistency and general policy... Apache and Eclipse don't even store their code on github so I would imagine they might have issues with a bountservice.
• mindcrime 11y ago
  We use a subscription model at Fogbeam, but here's the twist: all our software is open source, and you're free to use it as you like, with or without a subscription. So why buy a subscription at all? Because you get the kinds of things big companies care about: certification, maintenance, support, indemnification, somebody to sue if things don't work, a vendor to shift blame onto if the shit hits the fan, a discount on professional services work, perpetual upgrades, priority access to influence the roadmap and direction of the product, etc. Subscriptions are also a win for customers in that (depending on the details) they may be able to pay for a subscription out of an operational budget, rather than needing to go to some committee and get approval for a large one-time capital expenditure. And with subscriptions you are paying a portion of the cost in future, inflated, dollars instead of today's dollars. Of course, like any vendor who does OSS, we run the risk of having a lot of people using our software and never paying, but that's just something we accept. But here's the thing... we don't sell development tools - IDEs and the like. Our stuff is backend/middle-ware that costs in the tens of thousands of dollars and up (for companies with thousands of employees, anyway), which makes things like worrying about capital expenditures more of an issue. At the kind of price-points you are talking about for IDEs and what-not, I'm not sure the advantages of a subscription (from the customer POV) really carry much weight.
  • mreiland 11y ago
    I would like to see the software contract that includes indemnification for the software.
    • mindcrime 11y ago
      We don't have the final wording all worked out for all of that stuff. We've been pretty focused on product stuff for the past while, and only recently got to a point where we have a product actually available for sell, and we're still working on contracts / licenses and all that. But what I can tell you is that our approach will probably look a lot like what Red Hat does[1]. Basically, it's a guarantee that if you get sued for using our software (patent infringement, whatever) then we protect you from any fallout from that. [1]: http://www.redhat.com/en/about/open-source-assurance http://www.redhat.com/en/about/open-source-assurance
• jacquesm 11y ago
  I would like to encourage everybody that does not like the new licensing scheme of JetBrains to band together and produce either an open source product that is as polished so it can be used for free or, alternatively to take this apparently huge business opportunity and run with it. I never quite understood what makes people that make 100's of thousands of dollars per year so cheap that they would balk at paying a few hundred $ for their main tool of choice. Looking at a moderately tooled up wood or metalworking shop you'd be looking at a very large multiple for the main tools + accessories without a hope to make the kind of money we can make in software.
  • sireat 11y ago
    Many people are quite happy to pay for their tools, what they do not want is to be forced into a situation when it is pay for the tools this month or lose access to them. Jetbrains could have avoided all this negative backslash by keeping the current licencing scheme in place and adding the subscription service as an option. Again, think of it like buying a DVD over renting it on Netflix, most likely Netflix would be the cheaper option as with the exception of children's movies most movies/shows are not watched more than twice/thrice. However we want to feel the ownership of something. We do not want to be told that we must pay $5 for this exquisite hammer this month or be forced to go back to a 3 year old hammer.
    • falcolas 11y ago
      To continue the analogy, most woodworker's tools are 1) well over three years old, and 2) have consumable components which cost well over Jetbrain's highest subscription cost every year. Not to mention, once purchased, a woodworker won't get upgrades to their tools, or have problems with them fixed as part of their ongoing cost. Consider it a contribution to a team whose tools you obviously enjoy, to ensure both that updates keep coming and you're not stuck with a three year old tool because Jetbrains couldn't afford to stay in business.
      • toyg 11y ago
        If the problem is low revenue, they should just raise prices and be honest about it. I mean, if you're already paying £100 for an IDE despite the wealth of free alternatives, you do it for a reason: because it's worth it. There might be a price point where it stops being worth it, but it's likely not £120 or even £200. You're already competing with free, so price is likely not much of a differentiator already. Instead, they try to achieve a relatively modest increase by shoving a forced and fairly unjustified SaaS model down their existing customers' throats. That leaves a bad taste, so to speak. Instead of driving sales with innovation, they now drive it with fear (your tool will stop working! pay now!).
• rgdzz3 11y ago
  My main IDE right now is VS12 but once a week I use Webstorm for like 2 hours. Does anyone knows a good alternative to it? Preferably an IDE not a TextEditor.
• 811639047892938 11y ago
  I gotta say, this was decent press for Jetbeans, because I like subscription models and I skipped buying PHPStorm recently because I didn't want to pay a big price, but I'm pretty sure I'll subscribe at these prices.
• nbevans 11y ago
  It's really odd how the C# community took ReSharper to heart so easily and somewhat irreversibly. The amount of C# developers out there now that will literally turn down a job offer if ReSharper is not used at that shop. It is also the #1 complaint of even higher-end C# devs as to why they would never move to F#... because there is not ReSharper for it. Duh. It's sad they can't see that ReSharper is merely a symptom of a poor language; to work around all its flaws.
  • xaqfox 11y ago
    What flaws in the language does Resharper overcome? Does a language exist that causes you to never need to refactor code?
    • nbevans 11y ago
      Have you ever used ReSharper? It is far more than just a refactoring tool. It is basically a set of extensions for Visual Studio that somewhat entirely transforms the VS experience. It could be described as pseudo-productivity tool for Visual Studio more than merely a refactoring tool. With that said, refactorings in C# code (like Java) are quite often incredibly repetitive which is why ReSharper exists: to ease that pain. Quite often it is alternating a property to a field, and vice versa. Or auto-implementing a new constructor parameter with a null checker, field or property setter, readonly detection etc. It's just boring repetitive rubbish that the language has delegated onto the programmer rather than simply improve the syntax. There is a common expression about C# (admittedly, often perpetuated by those whom have moved on from C#) which is "In C#, you have to do everything three times." ReSharper has a type of code linting built into it which can be rolled out to the whole project team. This is cool and all. But it would have been better if the language ecosystem itself agreed upon a stylistic standard and provided a code linter for it. Then allowed that to be added in as a build step. C# shops are possibly too lazy for that though. It's all about the IDE baby! And that ultimately is the USP of ReSharper. A product for lazy developers. It's no wonder they charge quite handsomely for it.
      • taco_emoji 11y ago
• quaffapint 11y ago
  Biggest problem I have is the need for a live Internet connection. We do all our work in an offline dev environment. Now trying to get some licensing server installed in an Enterprise environment is a PITA.
• balabaster 11y ago
  Moving to a subscription model for 1 thing is okay, perhaps 2, or even 3. But with every company gradually moving to subscription models, it is emptying out our wallets every month and removing more and more of our income to maintain the status quo. From my own perspective, and I know this doesn't apply to all, but I cannot imagine I'm the only person with this viewpoint: I'm sick of other developers saying things like: "You know what? For the amount developers earn, $X is a small price to pay." You're right, $X for a single piece of software is a small price. But when you add the cost of your MSDN license here, your JetBrains license there, your Xamarin university/license, O'Reilly Safari License, PluralSight license and countless other licenses and software purchases to do our jobs - all of which are gradually moving towards month-by-month subscription models with excessively large combined annual overheads, it cuts more and more into your budget... and not to forget that the income you make doesn't just pay for an ever revolving cycle of tools to maintain your competitiveness as these arguments seem to forget [unless you're still living in Mom's basement and all your income is expendable or can feed the endless software-as-a-service lifestyle]. It's also used to ensure that your kids get a good education so they can make their own valuable contributions to society; that you're able to live comfortably and not worry about where your next meal is coming from; that your family is safe and secure and well prepared for the unexpected; medical plans; retirement plans; mortgage; vehicle payments; the list goes on... all of which costs money - every month! I'm growing tired of companies feeling like they can reach into my pocket month after month and take every spare penny for "services rendered." At what point will people turn around and say "Enough's enough! My money is mine!" I'm happy to buy products when they move me forward, but I hate paying monthly subscriptions on the off chance that you're going to continue provide updates that may or may not benefit me in the longer term. As a company providing software, I'm not purchasing you as a service. I'm purchasing your product. When I work for a company that pays me every month, I'm selling myself to them as a service - to do their bidding and write the code they want. If I'm to pay for you as a service, then the money I'm paying you had better be providing what I need to do my job more effectively, just like if I pay a cleaner to come clean the house, I'm not paying for them to develop makeup products that benefit their other clients while I don't wear makeup. I want the option of buying the product that does help me do my job more effectively and then I'll hold on to the rest of my money and allocate it where that is the case.
• codewithcheese 11y ago
  It seems there is a simple solution. You pay the subscription monthly, until after 1 year you own the current version. If you stop the subscription at that point you don't get rolling updates or SLA support.
• claar 11y ago
  This is a psychological issue for me. I gladly entered JetBrain's "cattle pen", and pay yearly for the privilege of being "trapped" there. Whether I might want to leave doesn't cross my mind, because I like it there. Now they're adding security at the gate. I still don't want to leave, but now it's obvious that I'm trapped. It just feels different, and I don't like it.
  • yAak 11y ago
    I think a lot of people are encountering this same issue -- myself included!
• cromwellian 11y ago
  JetBrains is in a tough market where they charge for what other competitors give away for free. They do so by making awesome products but doing that takes money and resources. If you want them to continue to invest in making the worlds best IDEs, you should be cheering this decision. They charge a pittance for such products. Seriously, for the price of IntelliJ ultimate, most programmers will earn that in 2-3 hours of work. Your paying 2-3 hours of your time for a product that saves you hundreds of hours, and helps you earn a high white collar salary. I just don't get people who whine about the pricing of their tools. Have you looked at the costs of video production, 3d and 2d art programs? Profession music creation software? Or any enterprise software for godsakes? JetBrains has fought hard to survive and thrive in a cut throat market where most people use free tools and don't want to buy anything. They make a premium product and sell it for less than a cheap smartphone you upgrade every 2 years. Maybe they can please people who want the false comfort of ownership by boosting the price of the non-rent edition.
  • chucky_z 11y ago
    As an interesting perspective, I don't know a single person who pirates any JetBrains software. All the programmers I know use their software exclusively and pay for it. I can name many people who pirate all sorts of video production, 3d, and 2d art programs. As for myself, maybe I'm a curmudgeon, but I try to avoid paid software at all costs. I used Sublime Text briefly, but switched back to vim when I found a good combination of plugins (caveat: I do little programming).
• konradb 11y ago
  Perhaps if they have a model where after you've had a solid 12 months of subscriptions behind you, you can stop and use the last good versions you had, that would fix the issues people are complaining about. That would lose you the 'renewing' discount, but it wouldn't stop the concern about the IDE's not working.
• pilif 11y ago
  On the initial blog post there was a suggestion for a very good compromise which I would happily accept: Add a minimum duration to the subscriptions. If you cancel the subscription after that minimum duration, you can keep using the products you have subscribed to, but you don't get any more updates (like it is now). If you want to re-subscribe, you can, but the minimum duration starts to count from 0 again. This would give me the safety net that if worse comes to worst, I'll still be able to use the IDE(s) in some fashion while it still guarantees Jetbrains the fixed income which gives them the freedom to finally work on bug fixes some more, instead of needing to add killer-features all the time.
• rebootthesystem 11y ago
  They need to do a better job explaining the licenses. https://www.jetbrains.com/toolbox/ https://www.jetbrains.com/toolbox/ I can't find anything that explains the difference between the individual vs. company/organization licenses. Are these still single-developer licenses? Why does a company have to pay twice as much as the individual license? That's just silly. I'll have my devs buy their own licenses and reimburse them. People are not stupid, you know? Because these licenses expire on a monthly basis there really isn't a reason for a company to "own" the product. With the prior licensing scheme it made sense because the product never expired. You could continue using it even if you didn't need the upgrades. You were, in fact, purchasing an asset. Not too different from buying a set of wrenches for your toolbox, they might not be the latest in a year, but they work just as well. With this setup there is no reason whatsoever for a company to pay double monthly fees. That's just silly. I'd like to see someone justify a reason to charge a business twice as much. Please don't say "because you make a profit". This is like Ford charging you twice as much for an F150 because you buy it through your business. Regarding the company/organization license: Does one license allow one developer to work with, say, IntelliJ while another uses PyCharm? I have not ask. Again, there's precious little on the website to explain the terms and conditions of each license.
  • sgdread 11y ago
    If you're reimbursing personal licenses, it's actually violation if EULA [1] [1] https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/200544871-5-Can-a-company-reimburse-my-personal-license-purchase- https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/200544871-5-Ca...
    • rebootthesystem 11y ago
      I am not. We already own permanent licenses for what we need and do not intend on moving to the monthly plan under current conditions. I am simply pointing out people are not stupid. Doubling the monthly cost just because it is a business can't be justified and this is bound to lead to people gaming the system. Again, pick a service, say, gardener, and have them charge you twice as much to mow exactly the same size lawn just because you are a business. What will happen is they'll be treated to a big "fuck you" and someone else will get the business. Someone needs to tell me what they deliver to a business user that supports charging twice as much. There's certainly zero difference in the already questionable level of support, so, where is the justification? To me that's bordering on being offensive.
• hrabago 11y ago
  I wonder how many developers will stop promoting their products to other developers based solely on the subscription model? I know I would. Also, I never would have tried their products if they were already on a subscription model. That would have been a showstopper for me. I may continue to use them now, because I'm already hooked. However, they'll probably lose a lot of potential customers who'll never give them a try just because of their pricing model.
• bb0wn 11y ago
  And this is one of the many reasons why I've not used paid IDEs. I feel bad for everyone over a barrel with JetBrains because they've dedicated so much of their time developing in their lovely IDEs (many of my co-workers use their products.) This is not to say that a SaaS model is necessarily bad... it's just that, as a user, one is now beholden to the whims of a company for what is perhaps the most critical part of their work flow.
  • jonhohle 11y ago
    I'm surprised no one has mentioned Stallman - http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
• chinathrow 11y ago
  If someone at JetBrains is reading this: Having 2 licenses paid and planned to renew when I decide what great. This, not so much. Officially looking for alternatives.
• brudgers 11y ago
  The problem for any company providing a workflow solution is that if you solve the customer's problem by providing a stable workflow then there is no little for the customer to upgrade. Their workfolow is profitable, and the solution is analogous to a band-saw in a wood-shop: a fixture. On the other hand, upgrading to a new version with new features is a risk. When none of the previous version's features changed, there's still the reconfiguration cost...and usually previous version features do change if for no other reason than UI. Even a compelling new feature entails the disruption of changing processes. Ideally, the best long term strategy for a tools company is a subscription model that pushes no features and results in more or less the same profitability for their customers in the end: for example by exactly offsetting the gains from features with the cost of switching. The sweet spot is technical progress accompanied by business stasis. AutoDesk is the master at this...they started moving toward subscriptions almost twenty years ago. They got away from selling platforms and focused on features, and their customers are all locked into yearly cycles of disrupting their workflow and looking to features for redemption.
• fenomas 11y ago
  I was with Adobe during their change (as a tech evangelist meeting a lot of users), and watched it play out from both directions. And setting aside questions of pricing, one thing people overlook is that a subscription plan is a much, much better way to make software than selling annual or biannual updates. The problem is that for a mature product, yearly sales cycles create a toxic incentive to focus engineering time on flashy demo-friendly features, at the cost of spending cycles on performance, stability, workflow improvements that benefit power users but don't impress salespeople, and so on. It's a recipe for bloat - cutting out a flashy feature never helps sales, so they stick around even when they're not useful. I don't know anything about JetBrains or their software, or whether the above is an issue for them, but FWIW I think most of the Adobe teams are making better tools since the change, and it's due to having the feature priorities in the right place.
  • bluecalm 11y ago
    What about pay for a product + 1 year of updates and then if you want it you can pay for another 1 year of updates? It seems it doesn't create the problem you mentioned because as people buy on different days there is no cut-off point you would be incentivized to wait with updates to.
  • Revisor 11y ago
    > Yearly sales cycles create a toxic incentive to focus engineering time on flashy demo-friendly features I understand that argument, but what incentive does DRM with a killswitch create for the software company, if its customers must pay in order to keep the product running at all? Might it not create different perverse incentives, for example trying to close the ecosystem in order to make a switch a painful experience? Or in other words: What incentive to improve the software (other than the threat from competitors) does subscription DRM provide, if you can just collect the rent, because the cost of switching is too high anyway and the customers are at your mercy?
    • fenomas 11y ago
      Very fair point, and believe me I heard it from a lot of users. My answer is (was), the pressure to improve has always been from competitors, and that doesn't change under a subscription model. I know people tend to see Photoshop as an endless monopoly, but actually tons of rivals pop up and get users in significant numbers (e.g. Sketch), and they do it by being lightweight and flexible. And if Photoshop just kept being huge and adding on ten more huge features per year it would inevitably become a relic, if not by losing old users then definitely by failing to attract new ones. Not to dismiss your point though - it's absolutely possible that the company gets complacent and stops innovating and collects rent. I just don't think anything really stops people from ditching Adobe if that happens. In this sense I think people overestimate the tools' intrinsic value and underestimate the value of the updates each year. That is, I like Photoshop better than its competitors today, and I felt the same way three years ago, but between a three year-old version of PS and its competitors today I'd switch in a second, and I think many others would too. In other words, the only reason PS maintains its monopoly-like dominance is that it's kept innovating, and if one side of that equation changes the other will too. With that said, playing devil's advocate against myself, one big argument against what I'm saying here is lock-in from file formats like PSD - if people subscribe and make PSD files, the risk of losing work if they switched tools removes some of the pressure on Adobe to innovate. At the time of the CC switch Adobe said they would come out with some way to make sure people don't get locked out of their files, but I don't know if anything happened with that or not. A lot of tools support PSD these days so maybe it's not a hot issue but I think it's worth keeping in mind. Sorry to go to such length but I hope that answers your question.
• HelloNurse 11y ago
  The social cost of subscription-based offers can be enough to make users forfeit good products. If a developer convinces a manager to buy a perpetual license of IntelliJ, mission accomplished: the developer will be able to use IntelliJ forever. Persuading the manager to spend more on IntelliJ by making a convincing case that an upgrade is worth the money is an optional campaign, reserved for a favorable moment (e.g. when being able to use a new feature would be very valuable) in a vague future. If a developer convinces a manager to buy a yearly subscription to IntelliJ, the developer should expect to start using Eclipse after one year due to a cost reduction effort. Persuading the manager to spend more on IntelliJ is difficult (no expected updates), urgent (the software stops working rather than sliding into obsolescence) and a recurring unpleasantness. Moreover, JetBrains makes the sort of luxury products that are bought when money is abundant and regretted (but still used and enjoyed) in times of poverty; forcing customers who cannot pay right now to eliminate JetBrains products from their daily workflow instead of keeping them as happy users and waiting for when they'll want to spend again is a gratuitous demolition of goodwill.
  • sokoloff 11y ago
    I'm sure there are development shops that are that tight with a buck, but I've never worked at one. In my experience, once a recurring cost is baked into the run rate, it's easier to get it approved for the following year than it is to get an unforecast license purchase made during the year. If you're working for a shop where a $200 annual expense for a dev tool is a deal-breaker, I shudder to think of how the rest of your work life is (free drinks, food, merit raises, etc). (I acknowledge ahead of time that my comments are based on US employment.)
  • ovulator 11y ago
    I've used Eclipse for development at my current place of employment for years. I recently tried the JetBrains product and loved it, so I started pitching to my bosses that this will improve productivity blah blah blah. I can still do my job without it, and pitched it 2 months ago and have still not gotten approval (but haven't got said no to either) and it's a good year money wise, so the upfront cost is nothing to us. Now I would have to do this annually, even during down years? It's easier just to stick with Eclipse.
• steven2012 11y ago
  Frankly, I support this. We need to pay more for software, not less. The Freemium model is killing products because you can't make any money from writing programs anymore unless you get a huge homerun. People only want to pay $0.99 for a program that took months of man-hours to write. $5.99? Fuck it, that's too expensive! IntelliJ is magic to me. It's a wonderful piece of software, and I generally do not like Java. But it has transformed the entire experience. Companies like JetBrains needs to be incentivized to write this kind of software, and innovate on it. They're not going to if they have leeches that use the free version in perpetuity. And if they change to a subscription model, then good for them. If you use IntelliJ in a professional context, and you make a decent wage, a large part of it is because of IntelliJ, so you should pay up. $200/year is nothing compared to other things people spend money on like Starbucks, DirecTV, gas, etc.
  • TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    > The Freemium model is killing products because you can't make any money from writing programs anymore unless you get a huge homerun. This isn't Freemium. This is the equivalent of Buy-To-Play. You are paying for the product. Paying quote a lot, in fact. And unlike an MMO, there's no servers to run, just possible bugfix updates.
    • steven2012 11y ago
      If software developers expect to be paid well for their talents, the cost of software has to increase. And it's not just bugfix updates, it's new features and innovations.
      • wvenable 11y ago
        If they expect to paid well; they should make software worth buying and price it properly. In the subscription model, they're still (likely) under-pricing but now they don't have to keep with features and innovations -- because if they do nothing, and you don't pay, you lose access to everything you had before.
• wellpast 11y ago
  JetBrains makes an astoundingly great product in IntelliJ -- so many features and integrations that just simply work. It is so rare to find a product this sophisticated yet elegant and reliable. I want more companies and products to figure out how to deliver software like this, with the same quality and power as IntelliJ. Then maybe I'll start complaining about pricing models, etc.
• killface 11y ago
  Yeah, if you didn't see this coming, you haven't been keeping up. Their yearly upgrades? It's no coincidence that intellij 14 came out in 2014, 13 in 2013... If you have kept up versions as I have, it's practically no different. If this means we get features sooner rather than waiting for a whole major version upgrade, I'm happy. Yes, Adobe had a big clusterfuck when they did it, but you know who hasn't had as big of one? Microsoft Office. I subscribe to their office 365. 10 bucks a month for 5 computers, the whole office suite. I'll happily pay that. And besides, there's always the community edition if for some reason your 120k/yr job doesn't let you afford 100 bucks per year... People just have a meltdown anytime anything changes... chill the fuck out for a few minutes and let's see what happens.
• gfodor 11y ago
  There sure is a lot of complaining in this thread. But guess what: JetBrains makes the best tools in town, and the new pricing model is totally reasonable (and even beneficial for many folks.) So, most people writing long screeds are just going to pony up and forget about it in a few months.
  • tobltobs 11y ago
    Basic risk management will forbid to just pony up.
• ljw1001 11y ago
  No company that believes in what they're doing announces a major change on a Friday, before a major US holiday. That's what you do when you want the reaction to die quickly.
• andrewstuart 11y ago
  What an incredible whinge and whine. Why are people so resentful about paying money for their incredibly useful primarily development tool? Often while I'm using PyCharm I'm awed by how powerful it is and amazed that JetBrains has the resources, time, brainpower and money to write it. And that's not worth a few bucks? Sheesh. Seriously, it's a trivial amount of money and if you or your company can't afford it then you like this should go and use free alternatives. Loving the tool enough to use it but hating on a company enough to declare it's lost all its customer loyalty makes my blood boil. Also, how does this guy elevate himself to the all-knowing position to declare from his personal opinion how much customer loyalty JetBrains has actually lost? I want the companies who make great software to make money and keep doing it. This guy should just go use a different product that he doesn't have to pay for. It's not necessary to trash JetBrains on your way out the door.
  • infecto 11y ago
    +1 I do not like the idea of paying a monthly fee BUT I do buy the license annually so its not a huge difference to me. If this keeps JetBrains in business its fine with me. This is such an insignificant cost for a tool that I use all day, every day.
  • tomc1985 11y ago
    I do too, but many of us hate the subscription model. To go from having a certain level of autonomy to feeling like little more than a peasant in JetBrain's little software fiefdom... That is the problem with these models. Perpetual licensing grants the user independence... subscription licensing holds your tools hostage unless you pay up. $25 for adobe here, $20 for jetbrains there, pretty soon $20 for windows, $20 for office, $20 here $20 there $20 everywhere... it adds up. Maybe all of these companies will stay in business... if the software was sufficiently popular. If not, then POOF It didn't used to be that way. It doesn't have to be this way. Some of us prefer to pay once. That said, JetBrain's previous model was pretty shitty too... if you wanted to sit out a couple months and wait for the next version before renewing your license, those fuckers would backdate your purchase so it began on the last day of your previous license. Jerks...
  • balabaster 11y ago
• eweise 11y ago
  Bummer. Been using Intellij for almost a decade. Will give Eclipse another try.
• crimsonalucard 11y ago
  I know exactly why this is happening. It's the same for adobe: cracks and hacks. The keygen for jetbrains currently unlocks ultimate mode on all products for 100 years. It's not hard for your average script kiddie to find.
• jim_greco 11y ago
  Jetbrains charges way too little for such a ridiculously good product.
• deleted 11y ago
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• trevorg75 11y ago
  Here's the rub (and the danger of SAAS). This falls into some heavy psychology so: tl;dr you're a human being, you're going to choose what you think is a deal but you aren't going to jump through the hoops to get it, you're going to be screwed. Here's the science: So taking a simple example. Joe is a damned fine php/javascript developer. He is in a decent demand as a private contractor. Joe LOVES Jetbrains' tools. He uses youtrack to keep his work in line, he uses PHPStorm as his php ide and WebStorm for his javascript and has TeamCity handling CI. He gets the news that this is coming in and sees the fanfare and the pricetag and is like "wow! way to go jetbrains! $19.90 a month for ALL of your tools or $199 a year?! I mean that's only slightly more than what I'm paying now for my renewals at the yearly rate and I'd get all of their tools...." but Joe doesn't have time to look into it Joe is a busy contractor, work is coming in fast and furious now and besides, his current license doesn't expire until March. Nothing to see here. Well winter comes and work slows down as it does during the holidays, except this year it doesn't pick up in the spring. It's dead slow. It's the end of February and Joe's considering getting well...a "Joe Job" when the phone rings and it's a client with a fat contract to put him back on track. But the project needs PHP version 5.whatever-the-hell-the-new-hotness-is and PHPStorm only supports up to 5.old-and-busted. Time to download the updates! Oh crap, his license is expired. Wait didn't he see something a while back about nw licensing options. He certainly doesn't have the $178 dollars it's gonna cost him to upgrade PHPStorm and WebStorm right now and he REALLY needs it to do this project that's going to get him back on track. So he checks the pricing. Hrmmm $24.90.....wasn't it $19.90 when I looked before. Oh, it was a promotional. Damn. Joe doesn't have $24.90 either, maybe he can just buy the updates for the products he uses. Oh look it's only $9.90 for phpstorm and $9.90 for webstorm for the month...oh wow but together it's MORE than he used to pay for his renewals! What's going on JetBrains?! He used to only pay $178 a year to renew both products but now it's $198. Well that's a no go. So Joe decides to do the month to month thing and when the check clears from this job he'll just update to the full year! So 20 bucks and a couple downloads later Joe is in business. Wow this new version is great! The Jetbrains devs still have their stuff together even if their business people don't. He knocks the project out of the park. Well a month passes and Joe sees another ding on his credit card for jetbrains....oh yeah he should switch that subscription. He'll get to it later. Well a year goes buy. Another winter and another slow spring and another big project to bail Joe out. Only this time Joe doesn't have the 20 bucks to renew that month. Well no big deal Joe can just fire it up and use the old version he doesn't need the latest and greatest. Except, Joe can't. The subscription has expired and so has the tool. And so like a shallow friend when the money ran out so did Jetbrains and left Joe without the tools he needs. All told over the year, Joe spent $237 dollars on a product he used to spend only $178 and had nothing to show for it. I realize there are some things Joe could have done better, bad business practice etc. but this could very well happen and does all to often. Sure there are alternatives but the goal of a good business isn't supposed to be to force you into the arms of an alternative...you might get comfortable there.
• logfromblammo 11y ago
  To analogize this, imagine the perfectly cromulent subscription model of printed magazine delivery. You pay $X, and they mail you a new wad of glossy paper every month. If you don't pay $X, you just don't get new magazines. You can still read all the old ones. Remember National Geographic? Remember how your grandfather kept huge stacks of them that were all only an awkward elbow away of toppling onto the floor? Presuming you could locate it in the stacks, you could re-read the article about Elbonian mud-rakers as often as you pleased. If you subscribed to JetBrains's magazine, you pay $X, and every month they give you a new magazine, and take back the previous month's issue. If you stop paying, they would come to your house, confiscate your latest issue, and then search the premises to make sure you weren't keeping any older issues, or any photographs or copies of them. If you want to read something, it'll just have to be something else, like RMS's free gnewsletter. What JetBrains is doing is not switching to a subscription model. They are switching to a DRM-enforced rental model. Subscriptions are ideal from products that are consumable or otherwise ephemeral. Television shows or newspapers or foods or coupons or pharmaceutical drugs work for that. Things that are used once and discarded are perfect for subscriptions. Rental is good for things that have a low marginal benefit in comparison to their upfront costs, such that it takes a long time to recover that initial investment. You rent a hotel room for a night or two. You rent a car when you fly to another city. You rent a pneumatic excavator when you only have one hole to dig. You rent things that you do not intend to use enough to justify paying their purchase price. With respect to a tool of the trade--something you buy to help you make more money--you emphatically want to own that, rather than just rent it. That's a great argument for using open-source IDEs. Even the previous model was just a perpetual license with a limited-time upgrade option. The person who wants you to forever rent the tools of your own trade is not doing so with your own best interests in mind.
• adaml_623 11y ago
  So if JetBrains goes bankrupt and the license servers go down then we all have a month to sort out a new IDE
• xirdstl 11y ago
  I really love JetBrains software and use IntelliJ daily, and this initially had me really annoyed. However, after looking at the detail, I'm intrigued. I have a personal IntelliJ license that's a couple versions old, and an even older AppCode license. For $149/year I can get the latest of all of the products. Do I need them all? Maybe not, but I want them! I for one will strongly consider that subscription, even if I wish I still had the option to buy a perpetual license.
• deleted 11y ago
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• cam- 11y ago
  Intellij is one of the few IDEs that it is worth paying for.
• studentrob 11y ago
  I'd love to see a sentiment breakdown of % of usernames in this thread who agree vs. disagree on this basic issue. Does a tool exposing this exist?
• JeremyMorgan 11y ago
  Meh, $19 a month for all their products sounds like a steal to me. I currently use many of their products and upgrade every year so this actually saves me money.
• hbt 11y ago
  Intellij has no choice but to do this. Otherwise they lose revenue. They have mature software products and people are not going to renew the license every year for a minor update. Most of their products are so mature that you can buy them once and never look back. So how do they make up for this one time sale? Switch to a subscription model and convince users it's in their best interest. Frankly, I don't care about paying money every month; IntelliJ is worth the price. However, I never update software unless there is a major bug or major features. Updating software is always a gamble and if you customize it, it often requires additional work (deprecated plugins, invalid keymap, new bugs etc.) I hope they get this right and find the right business model to stay afloat without ruining the relationship they have with their customers.
• bluebeard13 11y ago
  Yeah, really bad....b4, we had a choice of when we would upgrade, if it's worth it, was there enough innvovation, etc. now, 'you' are forced to keep paying for upgrades, even if you don't need them right away, or want to just skip one. Sucks really bad...As a longtime user 10+years, I'm out...ransom does not play well with me.
• rpwverheij 11y ago
  I'm an indy developer who travels & works at various places in the world. I'm often working a place deep in the jungle, where there is some electricity but no internet. Not being able to work if I don't connect to the internet within 30 days will indeed decrease my happiness with JetBrains big time :(
• profinger 11y ago
  I hate this model in general just because I can't just pay a larger amount once and have it forever. Aside from that, this reinforces my coding minimalism. I don't have a need for all of these weird extra things that just make "life easier" about 5% of the time while screwing with normal typing 95% of the time (in my case at least). I am perfectly happy with standard visual studio and notepad for anything that isn't .net.
• gjvc 11y ago
  It is astounding to watch a company shoot itself in the head so publicly.
• nadgob 11y ago
  I'm one of those who really loves IntelliJ and helped introduce it in our company. What happens now? One pays more and owns nothing. payingCustomers--