3 ms·

What are your thoughts about single time purchase and or the JetBrains model?

eirikbakke 3y ago
Looking at IntelliJ Ultimate, they do $599 for the first year, $479 for the second, $359 for the third and onwards. But then they have a "perpetual fallback license"... so I assume many people will buy just the first year and then keep that version forever. For people who prefer perpetual licenses, is this because of a perceived lower total cost? Or for some other reason? Does the sentiment change depending on whether the buyer is purchasing for themselves or for their employer? One downside of perpetual licenses is that at any given time, a large number of different versions will be in use across different users. Though maybe the users don't mind--perhaps they only want to upgrade their software whenever they change laptops.
- _boffin_ 3y ago
  Let me ask you a question before answering. Question: Do you plan to implement valuable enhancements over the coming years or do you believe this is feature complete? > who prefer perpetual licenses, is this because of a perceived lower total cost? Or for some other reason? For me, it's knowing that I'll have access to the software forever, but if I want to continue to get valuable enhancements, I keep paying. This is for me, the individual. When it's for a company, I truthfully care about that a lot less, next to nill, but care more about support, invoicing, SLAs, etc... I have IntelliJ Ultimate at home and pay for it every year, but it gives me piece of mind knowing that if something happens, it's still "mine", but just doesn't get any new bells and whistles. Every place I go to, guess what I develop with? IntelliJ. If they don't have it for me already, they will within the week.
  - victor106 3y ago
    > Question: Do you plan to implement valuable enhancements over the coming years or do you believe this is feature complete? This is an excellent question. Not just for this particular case but for anyone planning on releasing subscription SaaS or app
    - eirikbakke 3y ago
      > Question: Do you plan to implement valuable enhancements over the coming years Yes, absolutely. The current release marks the productization of a long backlog of features that were previously developed only to the prototype stage--due to the project's origin as an academic research project. With that now done, I'm hoping to (1) establish a sustainable business model, based on the current product, to fund future development, and then (2) start a big engineering effort to really develop Ultorg as an alternative to Excel and custom-made CRUD apps. (You'll see a lot of VC-funded startups with similar goals. Inventing the "killer app" that lies in the space between Excel and a relational database is one of the software industry's holy grails. But there are some technological breakthroughs required that existing products didn't manage to crack, despite a lot of money poured into the problem.)

Looking at IntelliJ Ultimate, they do $599 for the first year, $479 for the second, $359 for the third and onwards. But then they have a "perpetual fallback license"... so I assume many people will buy just the first year and then keep that version forever. For people who prefer perpetual licenses, is this because of a perceived lower total cost? Or for some other reason? Does the sentiment change depending on whether the buyer is purchasing for themselves or for their employer? One downside of perpetual licenses is that at any given time, a large number of different versions will be in use across different users. Though maybe the users don't mind--perhaps they only want to upgrade their software whenever they change laptops.

_boffin_ 3y ago
Let me ask you a question before answering. Question: Do you plan to implement valuable enhancements over the coming years or do you believe this is feature complete? > who prefer perpetual licenses, is this because of a perceived lower total cost? Or for some other reason? For me, it's knowing that I'll have access to the software forever, but if I want to continue to get valuable enhancements, I keep paying. This is for me, the individual. When it's for a company, I truthfully care about that a lot less, next to nill, but care more about support, invoicing, SLAs, etc... I have IntelliJ Ultimate at home and pay for it every year, but it gives me piece of mind knowing that if something happens, it's still "mine", but just doesn't get any new bells and whistles. Every place I go to, guess what I develop with? IntelliJ. If they don't have it for me already, they will within the week.
- victor106 3y ago
  > Question: Do you plan to implement valuable enhancements over the coming years or do you believe this is feature complete? This is an excellent question. Not just for this particular case but for anyone planning on releasing subscription SaaS or app
  - eirikbakke 3y ago
    > Question: Do you plan to implement valuable enhancements over the coming years Yes, absolutely. The current release marks the productization of a long backlog of features that were previously developed only to the prototype stage--due to the project's origin as an academic research project. With that now done, I'm hoping to (1) establish a sustainable business model, based on the current product, to fund future development, and then (2) start a big engineering effort to really develop Ultorg as an alternative to Excel and custom-made CRUD apps. (You'll see a lot of VC-funded startups with similar goals. Inventing the "killer app" that lies in the space between Excel and a relational database is one of the software industry's holy grails. But there are some technological breakthroughs required that existing products didn't manage to crack, despite a lot of money poured into the problem.)