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How did he feel about perpetually renting them? Even if the tool is currently perfect, I don't trust that the company's future plans will align with my future n

How did he feel about perpetually renting them? Even if the tool is currently perfect, I don't trust that the company's future plans will align with my future needs; I expect that they'll diverge. edit: I stand corrected; didn't see the asterisk and the separate page specifying that an active subscription isn't necessary to continue using the current version of the software.

greenshackle2 9y ago
If you bother looking at the page you'll know when you buy a yearly subscription (or 12 consecutive monthly) with Jet Brains you automatically get a perpetual license for the current version. You only need to keep paying if you want to keep getting updates. If you're happy with the current version no one is forcing you to keep paying or keep updating. I can't speak to all IDEs, but at least with IntelliJ you're not just renting it. They even give you a helpful info-graphic telling you how to minimize subscription cost if you just want to get a perpetual license for a particular version: https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/article_attachments/203545445/Year_and_a_months.png https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/article_attachments/203545445...
- khedoros1 9y ago
  I looked at the page, but didn't read the definition of "perpetual fallback license". Thank you for the clarification. It still seems bizarre that one standard case is that you pay for a subscription, presumably using version x, and then are pushed down to version x-1 if you didn't subscribe for at least a year under version x.
  - greenshackle2 9y ago
    Thinking about it a bit more yeah, when you stop subscribing you might have to roll back 12 months of updates on your machine, which is pretty odd. Clearly they want to discourage you from doing it. At least bug fixes are included: "The license also includes all bugfix updates, more specifically in X.Y.Z version all Z releases are included." I can understand giving you the major version at the time you bought the subscription but it's a bit stingy to exclude minor version bumps (Y releases).
    - innocenat 9y ago
      It's not minor version bump. JetBrains doesn't use semver. X.Y is typically a major release, with X being the year (e.g. 2017.2)
- kllrnohj 9y ago
  That's an unrealistically forgiving outlook on this. You're forced to upgrade when the language you're using upgrades. Or the ecosystem around the product evolves. The IDE doesn't live in a vacuum that will work in perpetuity. It's realistically much closer to renting than buying as once the updates stop it's not that much longer until the product is no longer usable in a modern environment. Simple example would be if you want to use Kotlin 1.1.4 (latest stable) you must be using Intellij 2016.2 or newer to get the corresponding 1.1.4 kotlin plugin. And if you use an older plugin, the IDE will complain at you and things will be buggy and not work right. Similarly since gradle support is built into the IDE at some point that will fail if your IDE is no longer being updated. It's not realistic to avoid updating the IDE for long. That's why Jetbrains prominently features subscription and yearly renewals - because you're very nearly forced into it.
  - ajmurmann 9y ago
    You can hardly blame them for this situation though. They obviously have to do work to keep the IDE up to date.
rhencke 9y ago
With all subscriptions 1 year or greater, the JetBrains license grants you an eternal, irrevocable license to whatever version was the latest version at the time your subscription expired (look up perpetual fallback license). I'm not a fan of their license change either, but calling it perpetual rent is just not correct.
- jbergens 9y ago
  Last time I checked it was the FIRST version you could keep forever. I guess they wanted to avoid having people buying a license every other year. I could be mistaken, though.
cr0sh 9y ago
That actually happened with IntelliJ - which is one reason why I'm trying to move over to Atom. It used to be there was a plugin package to allow you to use IntelliJ for C/C++ development, in addition to all the other languages. That changed, though - and they split CLion off the main branch. So now - if for instance you want to do NodeJS robotics work, and interface to an Arduino (for example), you would need to use regular IntelliJ with the extensions for javascript, and CLion separately for C/C++ development. Essentially dinging you twice for what should be the same damn product. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to see them split the javascript portion off into its own editor suite as well. Atom may not be or have everything that IntelliJ does, but because it is open source, and extensible, and not controlled by a singular entity, I know that I don't have to worry about it changing like that in the future. Don't get me wrong, though - I like IntelliJ, I think it's a great IDE (started out with PHPStorm). But I think it should have stayed general purpose and extensible, and not lock languages out to move people to another (but essentially the same) IDE. I'd have no problem paying the yearly fee - but I'm not going to pay for it twice.

greenshackle2 9y ago

If you bother looking at the page you'll know when you buy a yearly subscription (or 12 consecutive monthly) with Jet Brains you automatically get a perpetual license for the current version. You only need to keep paying if you want to keep getting updates. If you're happy with the current version no one is forcing you to keep paying or keep updating. I can't speak to all IDEs, but at least with IntelliJ you're not just renting it. They even give you a helpful info-graphic telling you how to minimize subscription cost if you just want to get a perpetual license for a particular version: https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/article_attachments/203545445/Year_and_a_months.png https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/article_attachments/203545445...

khedoros1 9y ago
I looked at the page, but didn't read the definition of "perpetual fallback license". Thank you for the clarification. It still seems bizarre that one standard case is that you pay for a subscription, presumably using version x, and then are pushed down to version x-1 if you didn't subscribe for at least a year under version x.
- greenshackle2 9y ago
  Thinking about it a bit more yeah, when you stop subscribing you might have to roll back 12 months of updates on your machine, which is pretty odd. Clearly they want to discourage you from doing it. At least bug fixes are included: "The license also includes all bugfix updates, more specifically in X.Y.Z version all Z releases are included." I can understand giving you the major version at the time you bought the subscription but it's a bit stingy to exclude minor version bumps (Y releases).
  - innocenat 9y ago
    It's not minor version bump. JetBrains doesn't use semver. X.Y is typically a major release, with X being the year (e.g. 2017.2)
kllrnohj 9y ago
That's an unrealistically forgiving outlook on this. You're forced to upgrade when the language you're using upgrades. Or the ecosystem around the product evolves. The IDE doesn't live in a vacuum that will work in perpetuity. It's realistically much closer to renting than buying as once the updates stop it's not that much longer until the product is no longer usable in a modern environment. Simple example would be if you want to use Kotlin 1.1.4 (latest stable) you must be using Intellij 2016.2 or newer to get the corresponding 1.1.4 kotlin plugin. And if you use an older plugin, the IDE will complain at you and things will be buggy and not work right. Similarly since gradle support is built into the IDE at some point that will fail if your IDE is no longer being updated. It's not realistic to avoid updating the IDE for long. That's why Jetbrains prominently features subscription and yearly renewals - because you're very nearly forced into it.
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  You can hardly blame them for this situation though. They obviously have to do work to keep the IDE up to date.

rhencke 9y ago

With all subscriptions 1 year or greater, the JetBrains license grants you an eternal, irrevocable license to whatever version was the latest version at the time your subscription expired (look up perpetual fallback license). I'm not a fan of their license change either, but calling it perpetual rent is just not correct.

jbergens 9y ago
Last time I checked it was the FIRST version you could keep forever. I guess they wanted to avoid having people buying a license every other year. I could be mistaken, though.

cr0sh 9y ago

That actually happened with IntelliJ - which is one reason why I'm trying to move over to Atom. It used to be there was a plugin package to allow you to use IntelliJ for C/C++ development, in addition to all the other languages. That changed, though - and they split CLion off the main branch. So now - if for instance you want to do NodeJS robotics work, and interface to an Arduino (for example), you would need to use regular IntelliJ with the extensions for javascript, and CLion separately for C/C++ development. Essentially dinging you twice for what should be the same damn product. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to see them split the javascript portion off into its own editor suite as well. Atom may not be or have everything that IntelliJ does, but because it is open source, and extensible, and not controlled by a singular entity, I know that I don't have to worry about it changing like that in the future. Don't get me wrong, though - I like IntelliJ, I think it's a great IDE (started out with PHPStorm). But I think it should have stayed general purpose and extensible, and not lock languages out to move people to another (but essentially the same) IDE. I'd have no problem paying the yearly fee - but I'm not going to pay for it twice.