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> For some reason, some people are very reluctant to pay for tools, even though they use them every day in their job. This also really baffles me. You can see

> For some reason, some people are very reluctant to pay for tools, even though they use them every day in their job. This also really baffles me. You can see it a lot in various discussions even here on HN.

HideousKojima 4y ago
Because if your tooling is closed source (and if it's paid it almost certainly is) then your ability to maintain a project is dependent on some corporation's willingness to continue to support the tooling etc.
- frou_dh 4y ago
  Not really in the case of Jetbrains vs VScode, because if the fateful day came, it would simply be an inconvenience to have to set up the alternative, not the end of the world.
- kaba0 4y ago
  Most of intellij is open-source.
- lolinder 4y ago
  If the possibility of your tooling being discontinued is a real concern for you, paying for a Jetbrains license is your best bet. Their entire business is developer tooling: IntelliJ isn't going away until Jetbrains goes under, and they're not going under until people stop paying them. Microsoft, on the other hand, could decide to drop VSCode at any point as soon as the bean counters start questioning how it's benefiting the bottom line. And if Microsoft decides to kill VSCode, I seriously doubt anyone is going to keep maintaining it at the place where it is now. Even if someone decides to continue maintaining the base editor, Microsoft abandoning it will pretty quickly dry up the plugin ecosystem. "It's open source, so it will always be available to me" only really makes sense if your backup plan is to maintain it yourself. In the case of VSCode, you are relying on a whole ecosystem continuing to survive after the sponsor abandons it.
  - mike_hearn 4y ago
    It's worth noting that JetBrains has a long history of successfully competing against free IDEs, which were normally always more popular than IntelliJ. First there was NetBeans (bought and open sourced by Sun very early), then there was Eclipse (developed and open sourced by IBM), now there is VSCode. Heck there are probably others I don't know about. So, this is nothing new for them. Usually what happens is that after enough years have passed, the company funding the free IDE starts to wonder why exactly they're spending so much money to give away the results. The original passion-project founders have moved on, leaving behind maintenance devs who aren't motivated to defend it. Eventually it gets stripped to a handful of devs and donated to Apache. In the meantime IntelliJ continues to develop new features. The question VSCode users might wonder about is what's Microsoft's strategy here? They have plenty of money, but then again so did Sun/Oracle and IBM. Is there a long term commercial plan to let the VSCode team justify themselves.
    - vladvasiliu 4y ago
      > The question VSCode users might wonder about is what's Microsoft's strategy here? They have plenty of money, but then again so did Sun/Oracle and IBM. Is there a long term commercial plan to let the VSCode team justify themselves. Exactly, especially since VSCode is also an "open-core" product, just like JetBrain's products (the community versions are open-source). The difference is that the other parts are still free, as in beer. But this is precisely what makes the offer weird to me and makes me think there's a shady angle being played.
      - mike_hearn 4y ago
        Well, I doubt it's shady. Seems more likely they don't know what to charge for it and are incentivized to create user growth rather than revenue growth.
- mrighele 4y ago
  As long as you can build the project with standard tools (e.g. npm for javascript, maven/gradle for Java etc.) you can survive your favorite IDE disappearing suddenly from one day to the other. It is more o less a requirement if you use CI/CD and a non issue anyway since any decent IDE can generate and synchronize a project using an external tools as a source of truth.

HideousKojima 4y ago

Because if your tooling is closed source (and if it's paid it almost certainly is) then your ability to maintain a project is dependent on some corporation's willingness to continue to support the tooling etc.

frou_dh 4y ago
Not really in the case of Jetbrains vs VScode, because if the fateful day came, it would simply be an inconvenience to have to set up the alternative, not the end of the world.
kaba0 4y ago
Most of intellij is open-source.
lolinder 4y ago
If the possibility of your tooling being discontinued is a real concern for you, paying for a Jetbrains license is your best bet. Their entire business is developer tooling: IntelliJ isn't going away until Jetbrains goes under, and they're not going under until people stop paying them. Microsoft, on the other hand, could decide to drop VSCode at any point as soon as the bean counters start questioning how it's benefiting the bottom line. And if Microsoft decides to kill VSCode, I seriously doubt anyone is going to keep maintaining it at the place where it is now. Even if someone decides to continue maintaining the base editor, Microsoft abandoning it will pretty quickly dry up the plugin ecosystem. "It's open source, so it will always be available to me" only really makes sense if your backup plan is to maintain it yourself. In the case of VSCode, you are relying on a whole ecosystem continuing to survive after the sponsor abandons it.
- mike_hearn 4y ago
  It's worth noting that JetBrains has a long history of successfully competing against free IDEs, which were normally always more popular than IntelliJ. First there was NetBeans (bought and open sourced by Sun very early), then there was Eclipse (developed and open sourced by IBM), now there is VSCode. Heck there are probably others I don't know about. So, this is nothing new for them. Usually what happens is that after enough years have passed, the company funding the free IDE starts to wonder why exactly they're spending so much money to give away the results. The original passion-project founders have moved on, leaving behind maintenance devs who aren't motivated to defend it. Eventually it gets stripped to a handful of devs and donated to Apache. In the meantime IntelliJ continues to develop new features. The question VSCode users might wonder about is what's Microsoft's strategy here? They have plenty of money, but then again so did Sun/Oracle and IBM. Is there a long term commercial plan to let the VSCode team justify themselves.
  - vladvasiliu 4y ago
    > The question VSCode users might wonder about is what's Microsoft's strategy here? They have plenty of money, but then again so did Sun/Oracle and IBM. Is there a long term commercial plan to let the VSCode team justify themselves. Exactly, especially since VSCode is also an "open-core" product, just like JetBrain's products (the community versions are open-source). The difference is that the other parts are still free, as in beer. But this is precisely what makes the offer weird to me and makes me think there's a shady angle being played.
    - mike_hearn 4y ago
      Well, I doubt it's shady. Seems more likely they don't know what to charge for it and are incentivized to create user growth rather than revenue growth.
mrighele 4y ago
As long as you can build the project with standard tools (e.g. npm for javascript, maven/gradle for Java etc.) you can survive your favorite IDE disappearing suddenly from one day to the other. It is more o less a requirement if you use CI/CD and a non issue anyway since any decent IDE can generate and synchronize a project using an external tools as a source of truth.