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)
Last time I touched java (a year ago), 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).
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.
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.
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?
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.
The subdivision served multiple purposes: it increased revenue by segmenting the market, and it allowed for a level of specialization that was difficult to achieve with a single tool. For example, some of the PyCharm stuff requires hacks that most Java developers wouldn't want in their IDE, and I honestly wouldn't want to deal with any Java stuff if I can avoid it.
At the end of the day, the announcement is just corporate speak for "we need more money more regularly, so from now on you're going to pay rent; to make it a bit sweeter, rent includes use of swimming pool and sauna, which you may or may not need". Most businesses switching to SaaS don't do it for the customer, they do it for themselves.
This _feels_ pretty accurate. As a user of PyCharm, PHPStorm, and recently YouTrack, and in my experience, all the products either lack support for current trends (ES2015 for instance) or are riddled with bugs (YouTrack). YouTrack in general shocked me in the rough edges / lack of sane integration with SCM.
IMHO the "dipping toes" was the switch to the current model, which they did 4 or 5 years ago. It was a clear attempt at moving from shrinkwrap to SaaS. The constant stream of reminders in-product, on blogs, twitter etc was a strong hint that they'd really like you to pay something every few months. They were much more forceful than the average software vendor. This is why I wasn't really surprised by recent news.
As a hobbyist developer (I use PyCharm with a personal license, but I don't actually sell anything), I'm basically in the "screwed" camp. I thought it was about time for me to upgrade, but now I'll just keep using my current copy forever. I'm sad, because the tool is great; but stopping it from working when the license expires, rather than just disabling updates, is really a low blow. It signals that they don't think their upgrades are worth paying for (which in some cases is absolutely true, a lot of recently introduced PyCharm features are of no use to me whatsoever), and that they've stopped innovating and are now just rent-seeking.
I've not needed any of the new PyCharm features in about two years - but I've still purchased the new versions. In fact, as I work for an open-source company, my PyCharm license at work is free. I buy the personal license for home even though I don't work on non-free software... because I want to support JetBrains.
You are absolutely right. As someone who uses PHP, Python, JavaScript and a little Ruby, I had purchased IntelliJ so I didn't have to renew multiple licenses each year. If they had just come out with their "All Products" subscription service at $149/year, I would have signed up for it immediately.
I don't like their proposal that I must forfeit my perpetual license to IntelliJ to take advantage of the lower price and that if my subscription lapses for any reason I'll be forced to pay an extra $100 a year!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
IntelliJ likes to maintain two build systems. It has its own project files that keep track of dependencies and how to build things. Changes made to the POM have to be imported into IntelliJ's project format, if you build or run something in IntelliJ, it's not necessarily the same build Maven would perform, because IntelliJ is invoking java and javac itself without going through mvn.
NetBeans, on the other hand, uses the POM itself as its project file for everything it can. All dependency information exists only in the POM, and NetBeans reads it directly. What little bit NetBeans needs that doesn't go in the POM goes in nbactions.xml (e.g. main class, path to JVM), which is very small and minimal, and there's no duplication of data between the two. The NetBeans project file is just the tuple of (pom.xml, nbactions.xml). I've encountered many instances where IntelliJ and Maven get their dependency trees desynced, and while sometimes it can be solved by re-importing the POM, other times it can't, and resolving it becomes this huge hairy nightmare.
Better yet, whenever you initiate a build or run anything in NetBeans using a Maven project, it simply invokes mvn through a shell. You can see in the output tab the exact Maven command line NetBeans ran, so you can duplicate it or send it as instructions to collaborators who don't necessarily use NetBeans.
I have to use IntelliJ at my current job, and I find myself just using it as an editor and building by manually invoking Maven on the command line myself (and the company has our own system of scripts for running our Java projects).
I 100% agreed with you until I tried to run NetBeans on a MacBook Pro Retina (current model, fully specced out). It's so terribly slow at that high resolution.
It's probably tough to pirate their products in the first place because there isn't much of an incentive to crack them. It's not like a Call of Duty release where kids with no money the world over want the product. This is a tool for professionals, the kind of people who can shell out a couple billable hours worth of cash or get a license from their employer.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
I use IntelliJ, phpStorm and pyCharm all on a regular business. But I work for a university and just assume that the subscriptions won't lapse. That may be a bad assumption given that I control the departments budget and it would come out of my allocations if the cost go up. Mixed feelings on this change. But I really like the three products I use and will continue to use them.
If you regularly use/upgrade lots of their products then this new scheme should work out cheaper. The people who potentially lose out are the people who only used one of their cheaper products and people who go several years without upgrading.
Or, if you are on their flagship product (IntelliJ IDEA). Sure, you save a whopping 10 Euro per year. But suddenly, you have a subscription rather than owning a perpetual license. Sounds like a bad deal.
I just have to add, I just tried to install ReSharper 8.1 in VS 2015 (since I bought 8.1 last year), and it doesn't work. So yeah, JetBrains is already doing these Jackass-like slimy tactics with their perpetual licensing, when there isn't really any reason why they should restrict it to VS 2013.
It looks like even when you purchase a ReSharper license, the software will work for about a year. So subscriptions aren't that much worse.
On top of that, it's the difference between monthly costs for the company. Netflix, Spotify and Gmail all have monthly costs in terms of storage space, bandwidth usage, server maintenance, etc that users are directly affecting. You're paying for the content to always be available, to be available quickly and to not have limits on what you can and can't access.
Desktop software on the other hand has no direct monthly costs other than phoning home once a month. You could definitely argue that iterating development costs should be factored in here, I can't imagine that being a deciding factor in moving completely to this business model. I'm sure if they offered a low cost monthly subscription and a perpetual license option, they wouldn't have any issue offsetting development costs. At this point, they could even raise the price of perpetual license (hell, I seem to remember paying $200 for mine). I'd gladly pay an increased price with the knowledge that my software wouldn't stop working, especially given how many hours of productivity I gain by using their software.
>> the IDE landscape is a bit more healthy, so I expect that a subset of their customers will flee to other IDEs.
Agreed.
I dropped most of Adobe's products after they went to a subscription based model. The only product I still use is Photoshop and I'm planning on dropping that later this year so I can move 100% to Linux.
For the record, over 95% of the front-end devs I know use Sublime Text for their IDE.
How exactly do you think more "heads-up time" would improve the situation? Either you are gonna stick with JetBrains and their product, in which case heads-up is irrelevant, or you are gonna switch to a competing product, in which case heads-up wouldn't help either: you will still need to learn the new product, regardless of when you switch.
If you want to stay on a perpetual licenses for a little longer (to see how everything pans out), you now have to buy it within two months and not at your planned upgrade term, otherwise you lose that option.
Another benefit of more time would be that in a corporation where purchases are not as simple as pulling the trigger, you have some time to do the paperwork to get the subscription approved, while still continuing in the current update scheme until then.
I pay for Spotify. I don't like JetBrains' decision.
Walk me through why this removes my right to complain. I don't get it.
I don't like JetBrains' decision because using their software represents a large investment in time and effort to learn it and get set up to use it. That investment could then be destroyed at any time if they go out of business, or if they decide in a few years that their prices need to be 500x higher. This is important to me because building software is how I eat.
Spotify is click and go. It's just music, and there are about a thousand other services where I can get music if Spotify goes kablooie. Worst case I have no more streaming music, and I can continue to eat even if that happens.
So do explain, how does paying for the latter mean I can't complain about the former?
1. If they "go out of business" you will save money with the new model, because instead of paying for a year of the license in advance, you are paying by month.
2. Nothing in their old model prevented them from raising prices. Not sure how you think switching to a monthly subscription model changes that.
i.e. your entire premise, that this is an investment of time and money, really has nothing to do with JetBrains' switch to a subscription model. In fact, they would probably be more likely to go out of business if they stuck with the old model, so this protects your investment.
Complaining because you don't think you can afford it is an understandable position. Your points, however, are entirely irrelevant.
I think you're missing the fact that with the old model your purchase keeps working forever, you just don't get updates. With the new model, your purchase stops working when the subscription runs out.
If they went out of business or raised prices in the old model, I could keep using the version I purchased for as long as I wanted. With the new model, my software turns into a pumpkin and my choice is either to keep paying whatever they want to charge, or switch to something else.
> 1. If they "go out of business" you will save money with the new model, because instead of paying for a year of the license in advance, you are paying by month.
Oh, it's much worse than that. With the old licensing model, if JetBrains went out of business, you'd be left with an antiquated IDE that works. Under the new model, you'd be left with nothing because the IDEs need to call-home and verify against a licensing server. Who knows what happens when the licensing server gets decommissioned (I guess you could ask EA customers).
But what? We'd all like them to push out one last update that makes everything free, and I'm sure the odds of that are decent. It's not guaranteed, though. What if the assets get bought up by somebody who wants a quick turnaround on his money, and sees jacking up the subscription rates as the key to success?
I like JetBrains & am a fan of their products (I'm a paying customer). I'm sure they are good people with good intentions. However, I'd rather not have this unnecessary complication - it wasn't broken before.
> If they actually went out of business, I'm sure they'd to something to remedy the situation.
That all depends on how they go out of business. They could too busy fighting other fires to write a patch that removes license-check, or it could be a hostile takeover with the subsequent "we are discontinuing $PRODUCT from next month" announcement
They should be happy that the customers are complaining, it gives them a chance to consider their concerns. I just usually walk away without warning if I'm unhappy with a product, customers like me force businesses to do a lot of detective work to find out the reasons for bad retention.
Let me actually clarify what you are saying for you, as I see this sentiment quite often and it drives me nuts.
You are saying that as a paying customer, one is not allowed to question any product or service offering they pay for (or even will potentially pay for as a potential customer). One is not allowed to suggest improvements. One is not allowed to state that if the company would modify the offering in some way, then they would again become a paying customer. One's only choices are to pay for the product/service as is or walk away and keep quiet.
One is also not allowed to mention to friends/acquaintances/colleagues that they are dissatisfied with the overall value of a product or service, or indicate that they do not believe the overall value to be worth it. As before, one's only choices here are to give good recommendations of the product/service to others or to not say anything at all.
"Take what we offer or walk away quietly and never speak of this again, those are your only choices."
This is essentially what you are saying. Are you sure that is what you want to be saying?
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.
> 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.
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.
> It removes the option for me to decide to not upgrade because the improvements are not worth the cost.
The blog post stated this as a reason. They want to focus on quality instead of features to sell upgrade licenses. I was a bit put off that statement though since I expect bug fixes as part of my original purchase price.
> I was a bit put off that statement though since I expect bug fixes as part of my original purchase price.
You should expect that. But when it comes time to purchase the upgrade, would you do it ONLY for future bugfixes? Or for new features?
Most people would upgrade only if there were new features, because otherwise they'll just use their older version with whatever bugs it has that might not even effect them. JetBrains is a business after all...
Yeah, that's bullshit. I'd gladly pay for a maintenance release with only bug fixes considering the quality of the latest versions has tanked. I've already done it for the last two version of PHPStorm (each which has been more buggy than the previous with no great new features).
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.
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.
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?
You don't seem to understand how the choice defines the relationship.
Imperfect Analogy Time
Imagine a deli that you go to every morning. It's the only one in the neighborhood, but they make great bagels, so you don't go out of your way to find a new deli.
Now imagine the deli adopts a subscription pricing model -- no other options. If you want food from that deli, you have to subscribe month-to-month. If you don't want to subscribe, you have to walk 5 blocks out of your way to go to a different deli.
You decide to subscribe because you were going there every morning anyway.
Over the coming months, however, the food keeps getting worse. The service grows poor. You wind up waiting longer for your food. But you're invested in the deli, and it'd be a hassle to leave, so you put up with it.
Eventually you bail, of course. But for a number of months, you were stuck in that gray area in there in which the deli can take advantage of the fact that, if you drop your subscription, you'd have to have expended significantly more effort and time to come up with an alternative.
Keeping prices the same while providing less for the money is still a change in the pricing model.
Before, the choice after a year was to pay for an upgrade or keep using the old version. Now the choice after a year is to pay for a renewal or find a new tool entirely.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
So pay yearly and make sure at the annual accounting meeting to renew your Jetbrain subscriptions because they are the ultimate infrastructure for your company?
> I would easily pay double what I'm paying now _but_ on the existing scheme where I can upgrade when I want to...
If he upgrades every other year, then JetBrains's revenue per year works out to be the exactly the same as in their subscription model. In the subscription model, if he has a down month around about the time when his JB subscription payment is due, he loses access to his tools. This could kill his business, which would -in turn- shut off the money faucet to JB.
> (it's a business expense, so it's even cheaper)
Does JetBrains have a business license that's cheaper than $120/year? If they don't, then $120/year is still $120/year, whether or not a business is spending the money.
> Your business model seems more suspect...
Do you run a business? Do you know anyone who does? There are good months and bad months; cash flow is almost never steady. Indeed, it is likely this very fact that is causing the JB people to switch to the subscription (AKA "Let's get a guaranteed revenue stream!") model of billing.
Your 1 year upgrade starts from when your last license ran, not from when you paid for the upgrade. So if your license ran out in January and you bought a 1 year upgrade next June. That upgrade would only last until next January, not next June.
So the complaint is that, because you choose not to regularly renew the software, you don't get the discount that comes with it? That sounds kind of entitled, honestly.
It goes against decades of tradition. In the past, the upgrade was offered at a discount to reward your customers for staying with you. It also reflected the lower acquisition cost for that release -- since you didn't have to spend any marketing dollars to find them.
Their policy was saying "We appreciate your loyalty, but only for the next year then you'll have to go back to paying full price." But the year didn't start on the renewal date, it was back-dated to the anniversary of the original purchase date. Which meant if you didn't renew on time, you weren't getting a full year .. maybe only 8 months. It was a money-grab, but one I could tolerate.
I made sense if you think about paying for updates in terms of paying for their work. If you wait 3 months and then get 12 months license for updates you effectively got 15 months for a price of 12. They may be hesitant to offer that to you on a discounted price. I think it makes perfect sense.
The 3 months were spent using the previous version, so you didn't get the benefit of the improvements in the upgrade. But this scheme means you paid for them anyway.
Anniversary date: March 1st
Upgrade announced: June 1st
You get around to purchasing the upgrade: September 1st
You get to use the new version for 5 more months (until March 1st) before your upgrade premium expires.
You didn't "use" the new things but you get them now. They've spent 3 months developing stuff which you now want basically for free. Think about it as paying for work, it takes time to develop features, say 1 feature a week. You didn't pay for 3 months, they added 12 things. You now get them without paying if you were to get 12 months since renewal.
It really is no wonder they don't want to offer that on a discount.
> 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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That's not necessarily the case. Corporations also love pre-tax operating expenses much more than depreciating capital expenditure. A lot of "cloud business" is moved by this simple accounting reality, rather than any technical benefit: renting AWS time might cost more than buying a server, but because the server is depreciating cap-ex, for your CFO it's actually the cheaper option.
For a larger corporation where the act of managing pools of licenses is a significant expense and literally everything the business does is managed in terms of contracts that must be maintained via regular payments, this makes a whole lot of sense. Even if the licensing model costs a bit more on paper, it's probably still cheaper to them because of saving the cost of having someone spend time physically managing all those individual licenses every time someone switches projects or enters or leaves the company.
For a smaller company or indie shop I'm not sure it's the same story. The calculus above depends on economies of scale to work out.
506 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 337 ms ] threadWe've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the HN guidelines.
http://eclim.org/
http://www.skybert.net/emacs/java/
emacs and a real a IDE, together at last.
Now, I've not really used Java, so I have no experience with this package.
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.
At the end of the day, the announcement is just corporate speak for "we need more money more regularly, so from now on you're going to pay rent; to make it a bit sweeter, rent includes use of swimming pool and sauna, which you may or may not need". Most businesses switching to SaaS don't do it for the customer, they do it for themselves.
As a hobbyist developer (I use PyCharm with a personal license, but I don't actually sell anything), I'm basically in the "screwed" camp. I thought it was about time for me to upgrade, but now I'll just keep using my current copy forever. I'm sad, because the tool is great; but stopping it from working when the license expires, rather than just disabling updates, is really a low blow. It signals that they don't think their upgrades are worth paying for (which in some cases is absolutely true, a lot of recently introduced PyCharm features are of no use to me whatsoever), and that they've stopped innovating and are now just rent-seeking.
I don't like their proposal that I must forfeit my perpetual license to IntelliJ to take advantage of the lower price and that if my subscription lapses for any reason I'll be forced to pay an extra $100 a 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.)
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.
Realise that the same model doesn't work for everyone but the subscription deal for all-you-can-eat is damn good.
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.
NetBeans, on the other hand, uses the POM itself as its project file for everything it can. All dependency information exists only in the POM, and NetBeans reads it directly. What little bit NetBeans needs that doesn't go in the POM goes in nbactions.xml (e.g. main class, path to JVM), which is very small and minimal, and there's no duplication of data between the two. The NetBeans project file is just the tuple of (pom.xml, nbactions.xml). I've encountered many instances where IntelliJ and Maven get their dependency trees desynced, and while sometimes it can be solved by re-importing the POM, other times it can't, and resolving it becomes this huge hairy nightmare.
Better yet, whenever you initiate a build or run anything in NetBeans using a Maven project, it simply invokes mvn through a shell. You can see in the output tab the exact Maven command line NetBeans ran, so you can duplicate it or send it as instructions to collaborators who don't necessarily use NetBeans.
I have to use IntelliJ at my current job, and I find myself just using it as an editor and building by manually invoking Maven on the command line myself (and the company has our own system of scripts for running our Java projects).
Especially when they already have a community edition in place, I think more people will use that.
Yearly subscription pricing seems OK to me, with some allowance for giving companies adequate notice to re-subscribe.
Loyalty is as good as the product; if another product comes along and makes my life easier i would switch.
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.)
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.
"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.
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.
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.
I have gotten so used to using ReSharper, I'm probably 30% less productive without it.
It looks like even when you purchase a ReSharper license, the software will work for about a year. So subscriptions aren't that much worse.
Desktop software on the other hand has no direct monthly costs other than phoning home once a month. You could definitely argue that iterating development costs should be factored in here, I can't imagine that being a deciding factor in moving completely to this business model. I'm sure if they offered a low cost monthly subscription and a perpetual license option, they wouldn't have any issue offsetting development costs. At this point, they could even raise the price of perpetual license (hell, I seem to remember paying $200 for mine). I'd gladly pay an increased price with the knowledge that my software wouldn't stop working, especially given how many hours of productivity I gain by using their software.
Agreed.
I dropped most of Adobe's products after they went to a subscription based model. The only product I still use is Photoshop and I'm planning on dropping that later this year so I can move 100% to Linux.
For the record, over 95% of the front-end devs I know use Sublime Text for their IDE.
The delta would be marginal. People just love to complain about change.
Another benefit of more time would be that in a corporation where purchases are not as simple as pulling the trigger, you have some time to do the paperwork to get the subscription approved, while still continuing in the current update scheme until then.
All of the things you listed are services that run on servers that cost money to run.
JetBrains' IDEs are downloadable software that we pay for and exists in perpetuity.
I also have no idea why you're referencing the community edition; the people complaining are customers that pay for JetBrains' non-OSS software.
What if you discover many other customers also don't agree with this decision?
In that case it seems fair to write it down and provide feedback to the company making the decision.
Walk me through why this removes my right to complain. I don't get it.
I don't like JetBrains' decision because using their software represents a large investment in time and effort to learn it and get set up to use it. That investment could then be destroyed at any time if they go out of business, or if they decide in a few years that their prices need to be 500x higher. This is important to me because building software is how I eat.
Spotify is click and go. It's just music, and there are about a thousand other services where I can get music if Spotify goes kablooie. Worst case I have no more streaming music, and I can continue to eat even if that happens.
So do explain, how does paying for the latter mean I can't complain about the former?
2. Nothing in their old model prevented them from raising prices. Not sure how you think switching to a monthly subscription model changes that.
i.e. your entire premise, that this is an investment of time and money, really has nothing to do with JetBrains' switch to a subscription model. In fact, they would probably be more likely to go out of business if they stuck with the old model, so this protects your investment.
Complaining because you don't think you can afford it is an understandable position. Your points, however, are entirely irrelevant.
If they went out of business or raised prices in the old model, I could keep using the version I purchased for as long as I wanted. With the new model, my software turns into a pumpkin and my choice is either to keep paying whatever they want to charge, or switch to something else.
Edit: oh, exactly one of their products has a Community Edition. Guess that's not much of an option after all, unless that's the one product you need.
https://www.jetbrains.com/products.html?fromMenu
I guess it's not "all" products.
Oh, it's much worse than that. With the old licensing model, if JetBrains went out of business, you'd be left with an antiquated IDE that works. Under the new model, you'd be left with nothing because the IDEs need to call-home and verify against a licensing server. Who knows what happens when the licensing server gets decommissioned (I guess you could ask EA customers).
> If they actually went out of business, I'm sure they'd to something to remedy the situation.
That all depends on how they go out of business. They could too busy fighting other fires to write a patch that removes license-check, or it could be a hostile takeover with the subsequent "we are discontinuing $PRODUCT from next month" announcement
We give JetBrains a chance to change it's mind by this public outrage, and if they don't listen – many people will switch.
You are saying that as a paying customer, one is not allowed to question any product or service offering they pay for (or even will potentially pay for as a potential customer). One is not allowed to suggest improvements. One is not allowed to state that if the company would modify the offering in some way, then they would again become a paying customer. One's only choices are to pay for the product/service as is or walk away and keep quiet.
One is also not allowed to mention to friends/acquaintances/colleagues that they are dissatisfied with the overall value of a product or service, or indicate that they do not believe the overall value to be worth it. As before, one's only choices here are to give good recommendations of the product/service to others or to not say anything at all.
"Take what we offer or walk away quietly and never speak of this again, those are your only choices."
This is essentially what you are saying. Are you sure that is what you want to be saying?
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.
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.
Has anybody ever tested that hypothesis?
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.
The blog post stated this as a reason. They want to focus on quality instead of features to sell upgrade licenses. I was a bit put off that statement though since I expect bug fixes as part of my original purchase price.
You should expect that. But when it comes time to purchase the upgrade, would you do it ONLY for future bugfixes? Or for new features?
Most people would upgrade only if there were new features, because otherwise they'll just use their older version with whatever bugs it has that might not even effect them. JetBrains is a business after all...
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.
I don't rent my tools.
Imperfect Analogy Time
Imagine a deli that you go to every morning. It's the only one in the neighborhood, but they make great bagels, so you don't go out of your way to find a new deli.
Now imagine the deli adopts a subscription pricing model -- no other options. If you want food from that deli, you have to subscribe month-to-month. If you don't want to subscribe, you have to walk 5 blocks out of your way to go to a different deli.
You decide to subscribe because you were going there every morning anyway.
Over the coming months, however, the food keeps getting worse. The service grows poor. You wind up waiting longer for your food. But you're invested in the deli, and it'd be a hassle to leave, so you put up with it.
Eventually you bail, of course. But for a number of months, you were stuck in that gray area in there in which the deli can take advantage of the fact that, if you drop your subscription, you'd have to have expended significantly more effort and time to come up with an alternative.
Unlike a deli, tools are a lot harder to replace.
Before, the choice after a year was to pay for an upgrade or keep using the old version. Now the choice after a year is to pay for a renewal or find a new tool entirely.
- old model: you keep using latest version you paid; no new updates;
- new model: you stop using the tool
Personally, 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)
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
(emphasis mine)
[0] Indeed, he appears to have failed to read and/or comprehend the first two sentences in pixard's comment.
Your profit margins prohibit you from purchasing new licenses at $120/yr (it's a business expense, so it's even cheaper).
Your business model seems more suspect than anything to do with Jetbrains.
> I would easily pay double what I'm paying now _but_ on the existing scheme where I can upgrade when I want to...
If he upgrades every other year, then JetBrains's revenue per year works out to be the exactly the same as in their subscription model. In the subscription model, if he has a down month around about the time when his JB subscription payment is due, he loses access to his tools. This could kill his business, which would -in turn- shut off the money faucet to JB.
> (it's a business expense, so it's even cheaper)
Does JetBrains have a business license that's cheaper than $120/year? If they don't, then $120/year is still $120/year, whether or not a business is spending the money.
> Your business model seems more suspect...
Do you run a business? Do you know anyone who does? There are good months and bad months; cash flow is almost never steady. Indeed, it is likely this very fact that is causing the JB people to switch to the subscription (AKA "Let's get a guaranteed revenue stream!") model of billing.
I do care about the difference between license and have it to use indefinitely and continually having to pay to use the product.
Notice how your comparison isn't apples to apples, because the one price is in dollars and the other is in dollar years.
Surely under the current model you can just not pay for another year until they release an update you want access to?
Their policy was saying "We appreciate your loyalty, but only for the next year then you'll have to go back to paying full price." But the year didn't start on the renewal date, it was back-dated to the anniversary of the original purchase date. Which meant if you didn't renew on time, you weren't getting a full year .. maybe only 8 months. It was a money-grab, but one I could tolerate.
Anniversary date: March 1st Upgrade announced: June 1st You get around to purchasing the upgrade: September 1st You get to use the new version for 5 more months (until March 1st) before your upgrade premium expires.
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).
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.
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.
* 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.
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.
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.
Miracles of finance, eh.
For a larger corporation where the act of managing pools of licenses is a significant expense and literally everything the business does is managed in terms of contracts that must be maintained via regular payments, this makes a whole lot of sense. Even if the licensing model costs a bit more on paper, it's probably still cheaper to them because of saving the cost of having someone spend time physically managing all those individual licenses every time someone switches projects or enters or leaves the company.
For a smaller company or indie shop I'm not sure it's the same story. The calculus above depends on economies of scale to work out.
http://vsrefactoringessentials.com
https://github.com/code-cracker/code-cracker