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I'm super happy JetBrains has been opening up all their editors to offer free access for non-commercial use. I've never made any money off of my occasional side

by hbn 1y ago

I'm super happy JetBrains has been opening up all their editors to offer free access for non-commercial use. I've never made any money off of my occasional side projects, so I could never justify the cost to pay for a license when I may go an entire year without using. But I really love their editors - their key mappings are an extension of me at this point, it's so smart about figuring out how the code works and letting you find usages or refactor without thinking, and their git UI is basically the only way I find git tolerable. I may or may not have been abusing the fact that my university let me keep my email address as an alumni to squeeze more years out of their free access for students, though that seemed to stop working for me at some point a year or 2 ago. But I'll happily take this instead!

rob74 1y ago
> I'm super happy JetBrains has been opening up all their editors to offer free access for non-commercial use. All? That would be news to me! From the 10 IDEs (not counting ReSharper, which iss a plugin vor Visual Studio) listed on https://www.jetbrains.com/ides/#choose-your-ide https://www.jetbrains.com/ides/#choose-your-ide, only CLion, Rider, RustRover and WebStorm are free for non-commercial use. Plus, each of the products has its own free or discounted licenses for certain users (e.g. students).
- jackwilsdon 1y ago
  There are community editions of IDEA and PyCharm which are free for commercial use too.
  - wing-_-nuts 1y ago
    Right, but goland, and importantly the go plugin for intellij are both not free, which is a bummer
    - mdaniel 1y ago
      Since the Goland plugin and then IDE arrived, they torpedoed the prior Golang plugin but it still exists and is Apache 2 https://github.com/go-lang-plugin-org/go-lang-idea-plugin/blob/%231288/LICENCE https://github.com/go-lang-plugin-org/go-lang-idea-plugin/bl... I don't recall offhand what features it does or doesn't support, and certainly not GOMODULES et al but just FYI They did a similar "fuck you" to the Terraform plugin <https://github.com/VladRassokhin/intellij-hcl/blob/v0.6.14/LICENSE https://github.com/VladRassokhin/intellij-hcl/blob/v0.6.14/L...> when they hired the developer and then made the built-in Terraform functionality basically abandonware :fu: And then, in some extra weird behavior, they have CloudFormation still in the open <https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-plugins/tree/idea/251.25410.109/CloudFormation https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-plugins/tree/idea/251....> but mysteriously it, too, is basically abandonware. Or maybe they're expecting the community to chip in and fix the bugs <https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issues?q=subsystem:%20%7BLang.%20CloudFormation%7D%20&sort=created&order=desc https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issues?q=subsystem:%20%7BLang...>. I dunno.
- NoboruWataya 1y ago
  I have been using PyCharm, IDEA and Android Studio for free for a while now. I'm not a student or any special category of user. I think you only get "core" features for free but they sure still among the most featureful IDEs that I have used.
  - mdaniel 1y ago
    I was curious about "for a while" and it is apparently 16 years (2009 commit with message "license.txt" https://github.com/Jetbrains/intellij-community/tree/4d9912f0a51d09019b6fe5fe85d441738f0e207e https://github.com/Jetbrains/intellij-community/tree/4d9912f... ) and the PyCharm Apache 2 release seems to be a lot harder to actually track down but https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/commit/e0d025da15217c6dbec279f5cb3ef584b373f145 https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/commit/e0d02... is cited as "initial extraction of python-community module (for now with a few cyclic dependencies)" in 2013
- hbn 1y ago
  Well, I said "has been," as in, in-the-process! I'm not sure why the staggered rollout, maybe there's strategic reasons certain ones will never have a free non-commercial license. But so far they've been consistently opening them up one-by-one.
  - NoahKAndrews 1y ago
    It'll be interesting to see what they do for PyCharm and IntelliJ, which already have free Community Editions. Long term, I doubt they'll want to have two types of free version that restrict usage in completely different ways, but if they kill the Community Editions, anyone using them for commercial use will have to either build from source (hopefully the end of community editions wouldn't mean the end of the open source parts), start paying, or switch to an alternative. I'm making zero predictions about what they'll do, there's a lot of ways it could go.
- lolinder 1y ago
  "Has been opening" is the present perfect continuous tense [0], which describes something that started in the past and is still ongoing. In TFA JetBrains says explicitly that this is a process that they intend to continue assuming it goes well. [0] https://www.grammarly.com/blog/grammar/present-perfect-continuous-tense/ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/grammar/present-perfect-conti...
dardeaup 1y ago
Not all of them. I believe it's IntelliJ, Rider, CLion and maybe 1 or 2 others. GoLand for example is not yet free for non-commercial use.
- NoahKAndrews 1y ago
  It's CLion, Rider, RustRover, and WebStorm, IntelliJ is not on the list. So far they haven't muddied the waters for any versions that already had free Community Editions (IntelliJ and PyCharm). The Community Editions are more limited, but don't restrict commercial use.
  - Defletter 1y ago
    > The Community Editions are more limited, but don't restrict commercial use. I've always wondered about this. I have the All-Products Pack subscription, don't get me wrong, but I used to have the Educational licence when I was in university. What was there to stop me from using it for commercial purposes? I get that the licence restrictions are likely more targeted towards medium to large businesses than little ol' me, but to what extent is it just an honour system? Just don't commit your .idea/ folder and basically no one would have any the wiser?
    - NoahKAndrews 1y ago
      As far as I know the commercial use restriction is pretty much entirely the honor system, with some risk of a lawsuit if they found out somehow.
vishnugupta 1y ago
They have this terrific plan where if you buy yearly subscription you will get the major version free for life even after you stop paying after one year. I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered it. Been using it since then for like 3-4 years now.

by hbn 1y ago

rob74 1y ago

> I'm super happy JetBrains has been opening up all their editors to offer free access for non-commercial use. All? That would be news to me! From the 10 IDEs (not counting ReSharper, which iss a plugin vor Visual Studio) listed on https://www.jetbrains.com/ides/#choose-your-ide https://www.jetbrains.com/ides/#choose-your-ide, only CLion, Rider, RustRover and WebStorm are free for non-commercial use. Plus, each of the products has its own free or discounted licenses for certain users (e.g. students).

jackwilsdon 1y ago
There are community editions of IDEA and PyCharm which are free for commercial use too.
- wing-_-nuts 1y ago
  Right, but goland, and importantly the go plugin for intellij are both not free, which is a bummer
  - mdaniel 1y ago
    Since the Goland plugin and then IDE arrived, they torpedoed the prior Golang plugin but it still exists and is Apache 2 https://github.com/go-lang-plugin-org/go-lang-idea-plugin/blob/%231288/LICENCE https://github.com/go-lang-plugin-org/go-lang-idea-plugin/bl... I don't recall offhand what features it does or doesn't support, and certainly not GOMODULES et al but just FYI They did a similar "fuck you" to the Terraform plugin <https://github.com/VladRassokhin/intellij-hcl/blob/v0.6.14/LICENSE https://github.com/VladRassokhin/intellij-hcl/blob/v0.6.14/L...> when they hired the developer and then made the built-in Terraform functionality basically abandonware :fu: And then, in some extra weird behavior, they have CloudFormation still in the open <https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-plugins/tree/idea/251.25410.109/CloudFormation https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-plugins/tree/idea/251....> but mysteriously it, too, is basically abandonware. Or maybe they're expecting the community to chip in and fix the bugs <https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issues?q=subsystem:%20%7BLang.%20CloudFormation%7D%20&sort=created&order=desc https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issues?q=subsystem:%20%7BLang...>. I dunno.
NoboruWataya 1y ago
I have been using PyCharm, IDEA and Android Studio for free for a while now. I'm not a student or any special category of user. I think you only get "core" features for free but they sure still among the most featureful IDEs that I have used.
- mdaniel 1y ago
  I was curious about "for a while" and it is apparently 16 years (2009 commit with message "license.txt" https://github.com/Jetbrains/intellij-community/tree/4d9912f0a51d09019b6fe5fe85d441738f0e207e https://github.com/Jetbrains/intellij-community/tree/4d9912f... ) and the PyCharm Apache 2 release seems to be a lot harder to actually track down but https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/commit/e0d025da15217c6dbec279f5cb3ef584b373f145 https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community/commit/e0d02... is cited as "initial extraction of python-community module (for now with a few cyclic dependencies)" in 2013
hbn 1y ago
Well, I said "has been," as in, in-the-process! I'm not sure why the staggered rollout, maybe there's strategic reasons certain ones will never have a free non-commercial license. But so far they've been consistently opening them up one-by-one.
- NoahKAndrews 1y ago
  It'll be interesting to see what they do for PyCharm and IntelliJ, which already have free Community Editions. Long term, I doubt they'll want to have two types of free version that restrict usage in completely different ways, but if they kill the Community Editions, anyone using them for commercial use will have to either build from source (hopefully the end of community editions wouldn't mean the end of the open source parts), start paying, or switch to an alternative. I'm making zero predictions about what they'll do, there's a lot of ways it could go.
lolinder 1y ago
"Has been opening" is the present perfect continuous tense [0], which describes something that started in the past and is still ongoing. In TFA JetBrains says explicitly that this is a process that they intend to continue assuming it goes well. [0] https://www.grammarly.com/blog/grammar/present-perfect-continuous-tense/ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/grammar/present-perfect-conti...

dardeaup 1y ago

Not all of them. I believe it's IntelliJ, Rider, CLion and maybe 1 or 2 others. GoLand for example is not yet free for non-commercial use.

NoahKAndrews 1y ago
It's CLion, Rider, RustRover, and WebStorm, IntelliJ is not on the list. So far they haven't muddied the waters for any versions that already had free Community Editions (IntelliJ and PyCharm). The Community Editions are more limited, but don't restrict commercial use.
- Defletter 1y ago
  > The Community Editions are more limited, but don't restrict commercial use. I've always wondered about this. I have the All-Products Pack subscription, don't get me wrong, but I used to have the Educational licence when I was in university. What was there to stop me from using it for commercial purposes? I get that the licence restrictions are likely more targeted towards medium to large businesses than little ol' me, but to what extent is it just an honour system? Just don't commit your .idea/ folder and basically no one would have any the wiser?
  - NoahKAndrews 1y ago
    As far as I know the commercial use restriction is pretty much entirely the honor system, with some risk of a lawsuit if they found out somehow.

vishnugupta 1y ago

They have this terrific plan where if you buy yearly subscription you will get the major version free for life even after you stop paying after one year. I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered it. Been using it since then for like 3-4 years now.