
How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours - rograndom
http://bytecrafter.blogspot.com/2015/09/how-jetbrains-lost-years-of-customer.html
======
mikeash
What bugs me about this is when I asked them about the change on Twitter and
they kept trying to blow smoke up my butt about how it's better for everyone.

Their first response was that it's cheaper than before. Except it's not. Did
they think I wouldn't actually go look at the prices?

Then they said it's better because you can jump in and out at will. Only need
Product X for a month? Only pay for a month. Which is fine, except I've never
heard of a developer who would do that.

This move wouldn't bug me so much if they were just honest about it. If you're
doing it because you need the money or it makes your life easier or whatever,
then fine. I don't like it even so, but I could deal with it. But when you try
to convince me it's better for _me_ , while treating me like a fool, I start
to have a major problem with the whole thing.

~~~
nadams
> Their first response was that it's cheaper than before. Except it's not. Did
> they think I wouldn't actually go look at the prices?

Uh - their "everything" price is $20/month = $240/year (or $200 for the annual
plan)

(All renewal at current license price)

PHPStorm - $129

PyCharm - $99

ReSharper Ultimate - $600 (no renewal price)

If I were to purchase that with their old license it would cost me $828, with
the new plan I only pay $240. And those are just the tools I have an immediate
need for (I do Python, PHP, and C# on an almost daily basis).

$20/month for their full suite of tools? Count me in.

When I first found their tools - I was like "ehhh I don't know - I'll stick
with Eclipse/Netbeans etc". Eventually I tried IntelliJ, PHPStorm and PyCharm
and they have been the best IDEs I've ever used. Trust me I'll advocate open
source when I can - but after all the issues I've had with Eclipse and
Netbeans I almost just totally switched to vi.

~~~
PaulHoule
Yeah, Eclipse has the Linux GUI curse.

Linux users expect the GUI to be unusable so they split into the camps who (i)
think Eclipse is the bee's knees or (ii) use vi.

The difference between IntelliJ and Eclipse is like night and day -- Eclipse
fans think the plug-in feature is great but install one too many plugins and
your Eclipse will get sick with pluginitis.

~~~
newjersey
I am a complete newbie so my perspective is inherently flawed but I am wary of
installing anything on a Debian machine that I can't just get using aptitude
(sudo apt-get install foo).

Correct me if I am wrong but isn't it possible to create a Debian repository
server at Jet Brains that I can add to my aptitude sources list and then
install Intelli J and stuff from the conventional command line interface? Why
does Jet Brains insist on doing things the Net beans way with opening a web
browser and downloading a binary every time?

~~~
joshribakoff
Not just that, but they've closed numerous bugs as "wont fix" & blamed them on
the linux ecosystem. On Ubuntu, I've gone through some very annoying bugs like
the IDE randomly freezing every 10-15m and needing to be restarted, even after
removing openJDK & installing the official Java, and all the other annoying
things they suggested.

I dislike them as a company because they claimed to support Linux, took my
money, and then blamed my choice of OS when things broke. If they don't want
to support linux, fine, but they shouldn't say that they do on the sales page,
then act to the contrary.

~~~
lfowles
Funny, because neither Pycharm or CLion have randomly frozen for me in Linux.
Sounds like they support Linux in my case!

~~~
smcl
There's a big difference between "it works for most people on linux" and "we
support our product on linux"

------
chiph
_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.

~~~
corin_
> * 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.*

Surely under the current model you can just not pay for another year until
they release an update you want access to?

~~~
piqufoh
.. but then you lose the 'renew' discount and have to cough up full price when
the update eventually arrives.

~~~
kedean
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.

~~~
chiph
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.

~~~
bluecalm
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.

~~~
chiph
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.

~~~
bluecalm
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.

------
fenomas
I was with Adobe during their change (as a tech evangelist meeting a lot of
users), and watched it play out from both directions. And setting aside
questions of pricing, one thing people overlook is that a subscription plan is
a _much, much_ better way to _make_ software than selling annual or biannual
updates.

The problem is that for a mature product, yearly sales cycles create a toxic
incentive to focus engineering time on flashy demo-friendly features, at the
cost of spending cycles on performance, stability, workflow improvements that
benefit power users but don't impress salespeople, and so on. It's a recipe
for bloat - cutting out a flashy feature never helps sales, so they stick
around even when they're not useful.

I don't know anything about JetBrains or their software, or whether the above
is an issue for them, but FWIW I think most of the Adobe teams are making
better tools since the change, and it's due to having the feature priorities
in the right place.

~~~
Revisor
> Yearly sales cycles create a toxic incentive to focus engineering time on
> flashy demo-friendly features

I understand that argument, but what incentive does DRM with a killswitch
create for the software company, if its customers must pay in order to keep
the product running at all? Might it not create different perverse incentives,
for example trying to close the ecosystem in order to make a switch a painful
experience?

Or in other words: What incentive to improve the software (other than the
threat from competitors) does subscription DRM provide, if you can just
collect the rent, because the cost of switching is too high anyway and the
customers are at your mercy?

~~~
fenomas
Very fair point, and believe me I heard it from a lot of users. My answer is
(was), the pressure to improve has always been from competitors, and that
doesn't change under a subscription model. I know people tend to see Photoshop
as an endless monopoly, but actually tons of rivals pop up and get users in
significant numbers (e.g. Sketch), and they do it by being lightweight and
flexible. And if Photoshop just kept being huge and adding on ten more huge
features per year it would inevitably become a relic, if not by losing old
users then definitely by failing to attract new ones.

Not to dismiss your point though - it's absolutely possible that the company
gets complacent and stops innovating and collects rent. I just don't think
anything _really_ stops people from ditching Adobe if that happens. In this
sense I think people overestimate the tools' intrinsic value and underestimate
the value of the updates each year. That is, I like Photoshop better than its
competitors today, and I felt the same way three years ago, but between a
three year-old version of PS and its competitors today I'd switch in a second,
and I think many others would too. In other words, the only reason PS
maintains its monopoly-like dominance is that it's kept innovating, and if one
side of that equation changes the other will too.

With that said, playing devil's advocate against myself, one big argument
against what I'm saying here is lock-in from file formats like PSD - if people
subscribe and make PSD files, the risk of losing work if they switched tools
removes some of the pressure on Adobe to innovate. At the time of the CC
switch Adobe said they would come out with some way to make sure people don't
get locked out of their files, but I don't know if anything happened with that
or not. A lot of tools support PSD these days so maybe it's not a hot issue
but I think it's worth keeping in mind.

Sorry to go to such length but I hope that answers your question.

------
andrewstuart
What an incredible whinge and whine.

Why are people so resentful about paying money for their incredibly useful
primarily development tool?

Often while I'm using PyCharm I'm awed by how powerful it is and amazed that
JetBrains has the resources, time, brainpower and money to write it. And
that's not worth a few bucks? Sheesh.

Seriously, it's a trivial amount of money and if you or your company can't
afford it then you like this should go and use free alternatives.

Loving the tool enough to use it but hating on a company enough to declare
it's lost all its customer loyalty makes my blood boil.

Also, how does this guy elevate himself to the all-knowing position to declare
from his personal opinion how much customer loyalty JetBrains has actually
lost?

I want the companies who make great software to make money and keep doing it.

This guy should just go use a different product that he doesn't have to pay
for. It's not necessary to trash JetBrains on your way out the door.

~~~
balabaster
Moving to a subscription model for 1 thing is okay, perhaps 2, or even 3. But
with every company gradually moving to subscription models, it is emptying out
our wallets every month and removing more and more of our income to maintain
the status quo.

From my own perspective, and I know this doesn't apply to all, but I cannot
imagine I'm the only person with this viewpoint, I'm sick of other developers
saying things like: "You know what? For the amount developers earn, $X is a
small price to pay." You're right, $X for a single piece of software is a
small price. But when you add the cost of your MSDN license here, your
JetBrains license there, your Xamarin university/license, O'Reilly Safari
License, PluralSight license, Apple Developer License, the Mac required to
compile/publish for iOS and countless other licenses, software and hardware
purchases to do our jobs - all of which are gradually moving towards month-by-
month subscription models with excessively large combined annual overheads, it
cuts more and more into your budget... and not to forget that the income you
make doesn't _just_ pay for an ever revolving cycle of tools to maintain your
competitiveness as these arguments seem to forget [unless you're still living
in Mom's basement and all your income is expendable or can feed the endless
software-as-a-service lifestyle]. It's also used to ensure that your kids get
a good education so they can make their own valuable contributions to society;
that you're able to live comfortably and not worry about where your next meal
is coming from; that your family is safe and secure and well prepared for the
unexpected; medical plans; retirement plans; mortgage; vehicle payments; the
list goes on... all of which costs money - _every month!_

I'm growing tired of companies feeling like they can reach into my pocket
month after month and take every spare penny for "services rendered." At what
point will people turn around and say "Enough's enough! _My money is mine!_ "
I'm happy to buy products when they move me forward, but I hate paying monthly
subscriptions on the off chance that you're going to provide an update that
may [but probably won't] benefit me in the longer term.

As a company providing software, I'm not purchasing you as a service. I'm
purchasing your product. When I work for a company that pays me every month,
I'm selling myself to them as a service - to do their bidding and write the
code _they_ want. If I'm to pay for _you as a service_ , then the money I'm
paying you had better be providing what _I_ need to do my job more
effectively, just like if I pay a cleaner to come clean the house, I'm not
paying for them to develop makeup products that benefit their other clients
while I don't wear makeup. I want the option of buying the product that _does_
help me do my job more effectively and then I'll hold on to the rest of my
money and allocate it where that is the case.

~~~
nilliams
So would you rather pay a one-off fee for a JetBrains product and have no
maintenance and support for it?

And by that I mean not even access to their public forums and for their devs
to stop posting on Stack Overflow. Because that's the reality for most one-off
purchase products. You'll get minimal over-the-phone customer support if
you're lucky.

Not sure why you see it as a product that doesn't fit a subscription model.
These devs have to constantly put in a ton of work to support this kind of
product.

And like other comments have pointed out, if you don't see the value, there
ARE free alternatives. It's your call. Ultimately if JetBrains have in fact
got this offering wrong then customers will say no and JetBrains will lose
out.

~~~
balabaster
I rarely go looking for customer support for anything except on Stack
Overflow. 90% of the time, community driven forums are way more helpful for
most products than the original company... most developers give of their own
time there by donation, to give back to the rest of the community that feed
that cycle. I like that I can give back there, just as I can receive help. If
Jetbrains suddenly required that their developers boycott such forums, I would
wager it would be a downward spiral for loyalty to them.

I'm not knocking Jetbrains here, so don't take this like a personal gripe at
their company. I've been a faithful purchaser of Resharper for a number of
years and will likely continue. I'm quite happy to pay for software, and I pay
for thousands of dollars worth of software and licenses every year to do my
job. Developers have families to feed. I know, I _am_ one and I _have_ one.
But I don't expect to write a piece of software that makes your life easier
and say - hey, by the way, you can have that software for $10 a month and when
you stop paying me, it stops working.

I don't mind paying for a support contract if I feel I need one, but that
should not be the default model for the software. I'd rather pay for the
software outright and then if I feel I will need support, pay for a support
contract too. But I don't want to be told "the only way to 'purchase' our
software is via a perpetual rental agreement."... as someone said below
somewhere - that's how poor people stay poor.

What is being sold here is effectively the same as a perpetual support
contract that comes with some free software... which stops working if you stop
paying for the support contract because you decide you no longer require
support...

------
steven2012
Frankly, I support this.

We need to pay more for software, not less. The Freemium model is killing
products because you can't make any money from writing programs anymore unless
you get a huge homerun. People only want to pay $0.99 for a program that took
months of man-hours to write. $5.99? Fuck it, that's too expensive!

IntelliJ is magic to me. It's a wonderful piece of software, and I generally
do not like Java. But it has transformed the entire experience.

Companies like JetBrains needs to be incentivized to write this kind of
software, and innovate on it. They're not going to if they have leeches that
use the free version in perpetuity. And if they change to a subscription
model, then good for them.

If you use IntelliJ in a professional context, and you make a decent wage, a
large part of it is because of IntelliJ, so you should pay up. $200/year is
nothing compared to other things people spend money on like Starbucks,
DirecTV, gas, etc.

~~~
qyv
This. This whole thread is people saying how great IntelliJ is, but damn them
for changing their prices. I can't believe how short sighted people can be
when confronted with even the smallest change. Jetbrains needs to make money
both to stay in business and to continue to innovate with their products, that
is a fact. Prices on things go up over time, why should software be excempt?
Would it be better if they put in ads and sold your personal data to pay for
it? With constant uproar or using the consumer as the product you would think
that folks would relish supporting a software company with their dollars
instead.

Besides, this pales in comparison to a yearly MSDN license and that new fancy
macbook every couple years, or even that morning starbucks fix.

~~~
tobltobs
Most wouldn't mind a price hike. But the outlook that in a few years the tool
I rely on for my projects will not work anymore is unacceptable for most
developers.

~~~
yazaddaruvala
> the tool I rely on

Then don't stop paying for it.

Meanwhile, its not like they are holding your data hostage. Apart from your
customized settings in their IDE you can always access your project files with
another IDE or editor.

~~~
tobltobs
Is it written in stone, that Jetbrains and their tools will still exist in a
few years? And that the then current version will be able to open my ancient
project files?

~~~
iofj
Not really, but our benevolent God has ordained that, especially if it becomes
abandonware, versions without license check will be available on plenty of
internet sites.

------
jacquesm
I would like to encourage everybody that does not like the new licensing
scheme of JetBrains to band together and produce either an open source product
that is as polished so it can be used for free or, alternatively to take this
apparently huge business opportunity and run with it.

I never quite understood what makes people that make 100's of thousands of
dollars per year so cheap that they would balk at paying a few hundred $ for
their main tool of choice.

Looking at a moderately tooled up wood or metalworking shop you'd be looking
at a _very_ large multiple for the main tools + accessories without a hope to
make the kind of money we can make in software.

~~~
sireat
Many people are quite happy to pay for their tools, what they do not want is
to be forced into a situation when it is pay for the tools this month or lose
access to them.

Jetbrains could have avoided all this negative backslash by keeping the
current licencing scheme in place and adding the subscription service as an
option.

Again, think of it like buying a DVD over renting it on Netflix, most likely
Netflix would be the cheaper option as with the exception of children's movies
most movies/shows are not watched more than twice/thrice.

However we want to feel the ownership of something.

We do not want to be told that we must pay $5 for this exquisite hammer this
month or be forced to go back to a 3 year old hammer.

~~~
falcolas
To continue the analogy, most woodworker's tools are 1) well over three years
old, and 2) have consumable components which cost well over Jetbrain's highest
subscription cost every year.

Not to mention, once purchased, a woodworker won't get upgrades to their
tools, or have problems with them fixed as part of their ongoing cost.

Consider it a contribution to a team whose tools you obviously enjoy, to
ensure both that updates keep coming and you're not stuck with a three year
old tool because Jetbrains couldn't afford to stay in business.

~~~
toyg
If the problem is low revenue, they should just raise prices and be honest
about it.

I mean, if you're already paying £100 for an IDE despite the wealth of free
alternatives, you do it for a reason: because it's worth it. There might be a
price point where it stops being worth it, but it's likely not £120 or even
£200. You're already competing with free, so price is likely not much of a
differentiator already.

Instead, they try to achieve a relatively modest increase by shoving a forced
and fairly unjustified SaaS model down their existing customers' throats. That
leaves a bad taste, so to speak. Instead of driving sales with innovation,
they now drive it with fear (your tool will stop working! pay now!).

~~~
falcolas
> they try to achieve a relatively modest increase

Looking at their (current) pricing model for this, it seems like a drive for
more predictable income, instead of additional profit. The ability to depend
on getting X dollars per month makes it a lot easier to hire employees on, and
justify working on the products.

And for many folks, Jetbrains will be getting less money out of them, since
they're offering quite a deal for anyone who works with more than one of the
products.

> fairly unjustified SaaS model

Except that they are providing constant, incremental upgrades to their tools
as part of the model. That alone acts as fairly strong justification for a
subscription model.

> Instead of driving sales with innovation, they now drive it with fear

Anybody who fears being unable to pay a $20 monthly bill is very unlikely to
have paid $200 up front for the tool in the first place. Double that for any
company who fears this new cost; they're already ponying up over ten grand per
employee, another $20 isn't going bankrupt them.

To go back to the woodworker analogy - the woodworker who can't afford to
replace the worn blade in their bandsaw has bigger problems than the monthly
cost of consumables.

~~~
nitrogen
_Anybody who fears being unable to pay a $20 monthly bill is very unlikely to
have paid $200 up front for the tool in the first place._

I avoid subscription software not because of the price, but because if I stop
paying or the company goes out of business the software stops working. Say I
completely change industries, then ten years later I want to go back and look
at my old projects. If I was using a subscription (IDE|audio editor|DAW|video
editor), I won't be able to preserve my historic work.

~~~
falcolas
For some proprietary formats (such as Microsoft Word, PDFs, or photoshop PSD
files), this is absolutely the case. However, when it comes to code, the
format is _unicode text_. There's very little danger of losing your code to
the sands of time because a company whose product you used to write that
_unicode text_ went out of business.

Of course, businesses are realizing danger and are publishing specs to their
proprietary file formats as well, so even in 50 years someone can re-create a
document which would have previously been lost. For example,
[https://www.adobe.com/devnet-
apps/photoshop/fileformatashtml...](https://www.adobe.com/devnet-
apps/photoshop/fileformatashtml/)

~~~
toyg
An IDE is not just a text editor. There is a nontrivial amount of
configuration that goes in a build system, and the IDE takes care of some of
it. Having to ditch the IDE often means having to manually reconfigure a good
chunk of the build system, as well as tracking down the exact version of build
tools the IDE was shipping with in a particular release.

And this just for IDEs. Intellij also ship a lot of tools (youtrack etc) which
may or may not be replaceable without significant data loss.

~~~
lemming
Note that YouTrack and other tools are not moving to subscription licensing,
only the IDEs are.

Pretty much everyone has their project set up to be able to build via an
external tool for CI anyway. I'm really not seeing the lock-in argument here,
except that moving back to Eclipse would be painful for a lot of people. But I
don't see why you would go through that pain now if you're currently happy
with what you get from JetBrains for the money that you're paying.

------
thisisandyok
They've posted a response on their blog:

"We announced a new subscription licensing model and JetBrains Toolbox
yesterday. We want you to rest assured that we are listening. Your comments,
questions and concerns are not falling on deaf ears.

We will act on this feedback."

[http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2015/09/04/we-are-
listening/](http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2015/09/04/we-are-listening/)

~~~
LoneWolf
I really hope they do act, I love their products but this new subscription
model annoys me.

~~~
gedy
Thing is - their current model was sort of a dumb semi-forced yearly upgrade
anyways. "Oh WebStorm 8 is out already, didn't we just buy 7?" etc.

~~~
LoneWolf
True, and I failed to explain myself properly, I have no issues with the
price, only with the fact that if I stop paying I can no longer use the
product, not even in the version it was when I stopped paying, but since they
say that are listening to the feedback maybe there will be some compromise on
that.

------
bitserf
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.

Not a great move by JetBrains.

~~~
matwood
> 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.

~~~
joesmo
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).

------
cool-RR
I see a lot of whining in this thread. If you think that an increase of
$100/year in the price of a tool that you use every day, for, say, at least 5
hours daily as part of your job as software developer as a meaningful price
increase, than the cost of your IDE is not close to being your biggest
problem.

Even taxi drivers invest more money than software developers in the tools that
they use every day, and software developers make quite a bit more money than
taxi drivers.

~~~
toyg
A taxi driver will buy a nice pair of comfortable shoes and then keep them
forever. The seller will not come around every month asking for money and
threatening to take back his shoes if he doesn't cough up. That's what a
different type of "business" does.

~~~
Artemis2
A taxi driver will need their car fixed periodically at their dealership. If
they don't pay up, no car.

~~~
calgoo
Just like my computer needs upgrades and fixes as well :)

~~~
cool-RR
Except a small fixup on a car can cost about as much as an entire computer.

------
mkozlows
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.

~~~
tobltobs
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.

~~~
acdha
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.

~~~
hwstar
This is also known as having a "Throat to Choke" in IT circles.

------
danieldk
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.)

~~~
jerf
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.

------
silvestrov
Polishing and bug fixes cost money, but nobody wants to pay for that. People
only want to pay for new shiny features.

If IntelliJ doesn't get money because developers think "old version is good
enough for me", then there is no money for bug fixing and for keeping the
product alive. It would end up as abandonware like most apps on the iPhone App
Store.

I'd guess the IDE have now reached this "fully featured" milestone where most
developers don't care to upgrade. So IntelliJ has to switch to a subscription
model to survive.

So we users have the choice between paying a subscription or having the IDE
end up as unmaintained software due to lack of funds.

IntelliJ can't put out a new paid "version 15" which has bug-fixes only.
People would be unhappy about that too.

I feel that the core IDE has degraded in quality over the past years because
the releases were feature-driven, and I'd be happy to see IntelliJ refocus on
quality instead of quantity.

~~~
teacup50
Half the reason I haven't updated is that JetBrains _hasn 't_ been polishing.
I'd pay for that, happily, but bugs sit unfixed for _years_ while JetBrains
rolls out entirely new (and similarly buggy) IDEs.

~~~
Navarr
I wonder if that's part of the reason to move to subscription? To improve
funding for that area?

If you operate on perpetual licenses you have to support that software and
find a way to get people to purchase again - via new features etc etc

~~~
wvenable
If you operate on subscription licenses you don't have to do anything at all.
There's no need to improve the software in less tangible ways or provide new
features since people will _have_ pay for what they current have regardless.

This is a great model for Jetbrains but it's a poor model for consumers.

------
jrs235
This isn't even Software-as-a-Service. Most companies that offer SaaS are
HOSTING the software and thus incurring ongoing monthly costs. The Service
part is that the purchaser doesn't have to install the software on their own
machines, pay for nor update servers, etc. Selling rights to use [but not own]
software on a monthly basis should be called RtpS - Rent-to-pwned-Software
(cause you're pwned, you'll never own it)

~~~
toyg
Some SaaS "hostings" are paper-thin, like Adobe or Steam. They are glorified
FTP sites.

~~~
mattkevan
Ha, yes. As a daily user of Creative Suite, the 'cloud' benefits are fairly
feeble.

The file hosting is handy, but we already use Dropbox and Google Drive. The
other features seem like they could have been incorporated into the desktop
apps but were pulled into the cloud to make it appear more worthwhile.

I can see how moving shrink-wrap software to a subscription can be good for
the company – reliable income streams, no longer having to worry about
headline features to get people to buy the next version – but (especially in
Adobe's case) it's hard to see it as anything but a cynical attempt to milk
customers for every last drop before the whole thing crumbles.

~~~
spitfire
> before the whole thing crumbles.

Are there any alternatives to adobe on the horizon? I'm asking because I'd
like to know. All I know of is affinity designer and pixelmator.

~~~
mattkevan
The field is wide open at the moment. It's an interesting time - there hasn't
been so many options in a while.

For Photoshop alternatives there's Pixelmator, Acorn and Affinity Photo.

For Illustrator there's Sketch, iDraw and Affinity Designer.

All we need now is a good InDesign alternative.

------
Rezo
I purchase a lot of commercial IntelliJ/WebStorm licenses for my company.
Previously, the cost was $499/y for new employees, $299/y for existing
employees. Now it looks like it will be a flat $319/y for everyone. Eh, I'm OK
with that. Now there's also upfront volume discounts, whereas previously you
had to talk to sales. In some ways it's simpler for me, and the pricing is in
line with other per-dev SaaS costs we have. Consider what you pay for a
software Engineer and the productivity gains, personally it's a no-brainer for
me. It's the best Java, Scala, Python, JavaScript etc. IDE by far.

With this change, I hope JetBrains takes the opportunity to switch from the
big-bang yearly releases to just a continuous stream of improvements. In some
ways they've already been moving in the this direction, they've added some
pretty great improvements to point releases this year (React/JSX, TypeScript
etc. comes to mind). This will eliminate release timing anxiety on both sides
(customers optimizing when the best time to buy is, and JetBrains deciding if
releasing major new functionality now vs in the next big-bang release), and
lets the company ship improvements as fast as possible.

------
HelloNurse
The social cost of subscription-based offers can be enough to make users
forfeit good products.

If a developer convinces a manager to buy a perpetual license of IntelliJ,
mission accomplished: the developer will be able to use IntelliJ forever.
Persuading the manager to spend more on IntelliJ by making a convincing case
that an upgrade is worth the money is an optional campaign, reserved for a
favorable moment (e.g. when being able to use a new feature would be very
valuable) in a vague future.

If a developer convinces a manager to buy a yearly subscription to IntelliJ,
the developer should expect to start using Eclipse after one year due to a
cost reduction effort. Persuading the manager to spend more on IntelliJ is
difficult (no expected updates), urgent (the software stops working rather
than sliding into obsolescence) and a recurring unpleasantness.

Moreover, JetBrains makes the sort of luxury products that are bought when
money is abundant and regretted (but still used and enjoyed) in times of
poverty; forcing customers who cannot pay right now to eliminate JetBrains
products from their daily workflow instead of keeping them as happy users and
waiting for when they'll want to spend again is a gratuitous demolition of
goodwill.

~~~
ovulator
I've used Eclipse for development at my current place of employment for years.
I recently tried the JetBrains product and loved it, so I started pitching to
my bosses that this will improve productivity blah blah blah. I can still do
my job without it, and pitched it 2 months ago and have still not gotten
approval (but haven't got said no to either) and it's a good year money wise,
so the upfront cost is nothing to us. Now I would have to do this annually,
even during down years? It's easier just to stick with Eclipse.

~~~
s73v3r
If your company is that tight when it comes to developer tools, maybe you
should consider alternate employment.

------
pilif
On the initial blog post there was a suggestion for a very good compromise
which I would happily accept:

Add a minimum duration to the subscriptions. If you cancel the subscription
after that minimum duration, you can keep using the products you have
subscribed to, but you don't get any more updates (like it is now).

If you want to re-subscribe, you can, but the minimum duration starts to count
from 0 again.

This would give me the safety net that if worse comes to worst, I'll still be
able to use the IDE(s) in some fashion while it still guarantees Jetbrains the
fixed income which gives them the freedom to finally work on bug fixes some
more, instead of needing to add killer-features all the time.

------
claar
This is a psychological issue for me.

I gladly entered JetBrain's "cattle pen", and pay yearly for the privilege of
being "trapped" there. Whether I might want to leave doesn't cross my mind,
because I like it there.

Now they're adding security at the gate. I still don't want to leave, but now
it's obvious that I'm trapped. It just feels different, and I don't like it.

~~~
yAak
I think a lot of people are encountering this same issue -- myself included!

------
aikah
To be fair , it worked quite well for Adobe products ( most of them are now
using a monthly subscription scheme ) despite all the dissatisfaction voiced
by some customers at first. It is both good for Adobe and good for the
competition. In fact allowed some challengers to be profitable when everybody
pirated Photoshop before as 95% of people using it only took advantage of 1%
of Photoshop features. It will be a good opportunity for alternative products
such as Eclipse or Netbeans to evolve and get better.

~~~
glenndebacker
The reason why it works well for Autodesk and Adobe is the fact that they have
a defacto monopoly in their fields. My boss doesn't like the fact that they
have a subscription scheme but we have one for Adobe Cloud because there isn't
another way. That is not the case for an IDE. I really like PyCharm and
PHPStorm but I can (and also would) drop them in a heartbeat.

You will always find some (edge) case who can profit from these kind of
schemes - an amateur photographer for example with Adobe CC or somebody who
uses all the jetbrain tools - but there are a lot of cases that are a
different and really don't have any benefits of using SAAS.

In Flanders we have a saying that goes a bit like this: "all small things
makes on big thing". The personal problem that I have is that if I would add
all those "inexpensive" subscriptions of services it will add up very fast to
a point that it is becoming really expensive. I don't buy all software in a
single month or can even wait for upgrading if an older version is good enough
for me, with SAASS that is not the case.

But I have the same opinion that this race to convert all commercial software
to SAAS will be beneficial for OSS alternatives. Personally I would even go as
far as donating (or crowdfund) (for the same amount that I would give to
jetbrains) to an OSS project, if that means that I would get an alternative
that I don't need to "rent".

------
mark_l_watson
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.

------
gortok
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.

~~~
teacup50
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.

~~~
WorldMaker
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?

~~~
aikah
The Ultimate version of IDEA seems to support all languages at once.

~~~
jasonellis
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.

------
27182818284
Everyone I've talked to wanted a slight pricing model change with JetBrains,
myself included, but _nobody_ wanted a subscription service.

It is just that, often you find yourself wanting PHPStorm, and PyCharms, but
that's it. A simple buy one-full-price-half-off-second scheme would have got
people like me to say, "yeah sure, let's buy up PyCharms this weekend. Why
not?"

~~~
timv
And the thing is, they didn't even solve the issue people wanted.

Yes, you can buy _everything_ for US$19.90 per month.

Or you can buy PHPStorm+PyCharm for ($7.90+$7.90) = $15.80

So, under the new model, it's still cheaper to just buy two full-price
licenses. There's no discount for the 2nd product.

------
jasonellis
As someone who jumps between PHP, JavaScript, Python, and a tiny bit of Ruby,
I have been using IntelliJ so that I don't have to buy and upgrade multiple
IDEs each year. I really miss the simplified project management of the
specialized IDEs. I would gladly pay $149/year for their "All Products"
package (maybe even the $199).

Unfortunately, there are a few dealbreakers with their proposed model that
will have me re-evaluating my development environment:

1) Losing the grandfathered pricing if my subscription lapses. I can swallow
paying $149/year for the All Products and would do so, but I don't want to
feel like a hostage where I'm stuck paying more if I take a month off of using
the IDE.

2) $149/year is pretty reasonable, $199/year a little tougher to swallow,
$249/year is a no-go.

3) As mentioned, I made a $200 investment in an IntelliJ license with the
expectation that I would upgrade each year at $100. Now I'm forced to convert
my existing perpetual license into a subscription where I'm held hostage to
keep the lower price or I lose access to my product if I cancel the
subscription after converting the license.

4) Losing access to the software if my subscription lapses. If the prices were
more reasonable (like those of the grandfathered prices, but permanent without
the hostage situation) then I could deal with the fact that I need to pay to
play. But I feel like we're paying a premium price (albeit for good products).
I like the idea others have floated of getting a perpetual license after
having paid for a full year subscription.

------
justabystander
Their "subscription" model was basically a year of small issue maintenance and
1-2 major versions. They spent more effort expanding into new markets than
they did maintaining and improving existing tools. I don't really anticipate
them spending any more time on tool improvement despite the cash grab.

I don't like companies that hold my development process hostage or treat me
like a serf. I get that they want to stop maintaining old versions. But
allowing people access to the full range of builds within their subscription
(with maybe a slight exception of providing the next "stable" build after
expiration) and some contract lingo should cover that.

Rental has its usage, but it's not for everyone.

------
logfromblammo
To analogize this, imagine the perfectly cromulent subscription model of
printed magazine delivery. You pay $X, and they mail you a new wad of glossy
paper every month. If you don't pay $X, you just don't get new magazines. You
can still read all the old ones. Remember National Geographic? Remember how
your grandfather kept huge stacks of them that were all only an awkward elbow
away of toppling onto the floor? Presuming you could locate it in the stacks,
you could re-read the article about Elbonian mud-rakers as often as you
pleased.

If you subscribed to JetBrains's magazine, you pay $X, and every month they
give you a new magazine, and take back the previous month's issue. If you stop
paying, they would come to your house, confiscate your latest issue, and then
search the premises to make sure you weren't keeping any older issues, or any
photographs or copies of them. If you want to read something, it'll just have
to be something else, like RMS's free gnewsletter.

What JetBrains is doing is _not_ switching to a subscription model. They are
switching to a DRM-enforced _rental_ model.

Subscriptions are ideal from products that are consumable or otherwise
ephemeral. Television shows or newspapers or foods or coupons or
pharmaceutical drugs work for that. Things that are used once and discarded
are perfect for subscriptions.

Rental is good for things that have a low marginal benefit in comparison to
their upfront costs, such that it takes a long time to recover that initial
investment. You rent a hotel room for a night or two. You rent a car when you
fly to another city. You rent a pneumatic excavator when you only have one
hole to dig. You rent things that you do not intend to use enough to justify
paying their purchase price.

With respect to a tool of the trade--something you buy to help you make more
money--you emphatically want to own that, rather than just rent it. That's a
great argument for using open-source IDEs. Even the previous model was just a
perpetual license with a limited-time upgrade option. The person who wants you
to forever rent the tools of your own trade is not doing so with your own best
interests in mind.

------
yodasan
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.

------
cweagans
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.

~~~
teacup50
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.

I don't rent my tools.

~~~
cweagans
So don't. There are plenty of other tools out there that you can use. Did you
previously pay the yearly fee to continue getting upgrades?

~~~
sgdread
Now you paying not for upgrades, but the fee to use. No payment - you can't
use it.

~~~
cweagans
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?

~~~
teacup50
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.

Unlike a deli, tools are a lot harder to replace.

------
hrabago
I wonder how many developers will stop promoting their products to other
developers based solely on the subscription model? I know I would.

Also, I never would have tried their products if they were already on a
subscription model. That would have been a showstopper for me. I may continue
to use them now, because I'm already hooked. However, they'll probably lose a
lot of potential customers who'll never give them a try just because of their
pricing model.

------
wellpast
JetBrains makes an astoundingly great product in IntelliJ -- so many features
and integrations that just simply work. It is so rare to find a product this
sophisticated yet elegant and reliable. I want more companies and products to
figure out how to deliver software like this, with the same quality and power
as IntelliJ. Then maybe I'll start complaining about pricing models, etc.

------
hoopism
In the previous thread on the announcement I expressed some concerns
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10165919](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10165919)).
An employee responded:

"I see this is turning into a conspiracy theory ) Fortunately, there's a
little thing called competition that prevents raising rates at will without
facing the consequences, and JetBrains is no exception: we're no monopoly"

So the message first was "We did this for YOU!" and then quickly became "Hey!
You can always go elsewhere..."

Doesn't sound like something they did for my benefit.

~~~
Latty
That's misinterpreting the response - he was saying that they were not going
to jack up prices arbitrarily. 'You can always go elsewhere' vs 'We aren't
aiming to screw you over - you can always go elsewhere.' \- there is a big
difference.

~~~
hoopism
Fair enough. Both of those interpretations are a very different message from
"Look at the nice thing we did for you"... which was my point.

------
Permit
I wonder if we're only getting to see one side of the issue here. How does
enterprise react to changes like this?

Could JetBrains perhaps compromise: Offer the current licensing for
individual/independent developers, but the subscription model for enterprise
licenses? Businesses are more likely to consume multiple products than an
indie developer.

What do you guys think?

------
davexunit
At this I'd like to remind folks that Emacs has been around for over 3 decades
and isn't going anywhere. Don't trust a single company with your most
essential tools.

~~~
frik
That's why I prefer open source tools.

JetBrains IDEA Community Edition IDE is open source, someone should fork it
and add the various language plugins (many of them are open source too).

------
jasode
_> , and most customers upgraded every 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.)

~~~
navait
The article is full of unsubstantiated claims, though I agree with the author
in principle.

------
nbevans
It's really odd how the C# community took ReSharper to heart so easily and
somewhat irreversibly. The amount of C# developers out there now that will
literally turn down a job offer if ReSharper is not used at that shop. It is
also the #1 complaint of even higher-end C# devs as to why they would never
move to F#... because there is not ReSharper for it. Duh. It's sad they can't
see that ReSharper is merely a symptom of a poor language; to work around all
its flaws.

~~~
xaqfox
What flaws in the language does Resharper overcome? Does a language exist that
causes you to never need to refactor code?

~~~
nbevans
Have you ever used ReSharper? It is far more than just a refactoring tool. It
is basically a set of extensions for Visual Studio that somewhat entirely
transforms the VS experience. It could be described as pseudo-productivity
tool for Visual Studio more than merely a refactoring tool.

With that said, refactorings in C# code (like Java) are quite often incredibly
repetitive which is why ReSharper exists: to ease that pain. Quite often it is
alternating a property to a field, and vice versa. Or auto-implementing a new
constructor parameter with a null checker, field or property setter, readonly
detection etc. It's just boring repetitive rubbish that the language has
delegated onto the programmer rather than simply improve the syntax. There is
a common expression about C# (admittedly, often perpetuated by those whom have
moved on from C#) which is "In C#, you have to do everything three times."

ReSharper has a type of code linting built into it which can be rolled out to
the whole project team. This is cool and all. But it would have been better if
the language ecosystem itself agreed upon a stylistic standard and provided a
code linter for it. Then allowed that to be added in as a build step. C# shops
are possibly too lazy for that though. It's all about the IDE baby!

And that ultimately is the USP of ReSharper. A product for lazy developers.
It's no wonder they charge quite handsomely for it.

~~~
taco_emoji
My main use cases for ReSharper are:

1) Auto-formatting 2) Integrated Unit Test runner - not great, but still
better than the built-in VS one 3) Go to Implementation - takes you to
straight to the actual class implementation(s) of the interface member you
clicked on 4) Auto-disassembly when you hit "Go To Declaration" on a
referenced DLL

Only automated refactoring I use is the built-in VS stuff for renaming
identifiers. I have no idea why you'd alternate between fields and properties
- most people just use properties unless it's a private member. Auto-
implementing a constructor is A) something VS can already do out-of-the-box
(snippets) and B) not really necessary a lot of the time since there's object
initializers now. And I have no idea what you mean about "readonly detection"
since 'readonly' is a first-class keyword.

> It's just boring repetitive rubbish that the language has delegated onto the
> programmer rather than simply improve the syntax.

You realize it's a living language, right? There was admittedly a lot of
boilerplate in older versions due to strong Java influence. But C# has had
type inference (i.e. 'var' keyword), anonymous types, lambdas, auto-
implemented properties, and extension methods since C# 3 was released in 2007.
C# 4 (2010) added co- and contravariance for generics, late binding, and
optional & named parameters. In 2012 they added async/await with C# 5.

And now C# 6 has static type import, lambda-bodied methods, inline null-check
operator, first-class string interpolation, and a bunch of property
enhancements that remove even more boilerplate.

I'm dying to know what else you would add to the language.

------
xirdstl
I really love JetBrains software and use IntelliJ daily, and this initially
had me really annoyed.

However, after looking at the detail, I'm intrigued. I have a personal
IntelliJ license that's a couple versions old, and an even older AppCode
license. For $149/year I can get the latest of _all_ of the products. Do I
need them all? Maybe not, but I want them!

I for one will strongly consider that subscription, even if I wish I still had
the option to buy a perpetual license.

------
gdulli
Personally, they had lost my goodwill already with their old upgrade policy.
If you bought a license on 01/2014, it expired on 12/2014, and you didn't need
the product again until 04/2015, the upgrade you purchase in April begins on
01/2015, retroactively beginning after the end of the previous license. So you
don't get the full 12 months they charge you for. When I realized that it was
the end of my support for them.

~~~
Latty
Why would it work another way? You are paying to extend your old license, of
course it carries on from when it finished. If you want a year from the
present moment, that's not an extension, it's a new purchase. Otherwise, no
one would extend until after a new release came out once it ended.

~~~
gdulli
> Why would it work another way?

Because I shouldn't have to retroactively pay for a period I didn't use a
product and the natural thing for me to assume was my status as a previous
customer/license holder was what enabled me to an upgrade with the advertised
"year's" worth of upgrades? Because that's how upgrade licenses work for other
software products? (Windows/Office, other stuff I've used.)

They can define a license however they want, it's just up to me whether I find
it worthwhile, and I didn't.

But at least in those days I had the option of continuing to use the older
version after it expired.

~~~
Latty
So you'd rather they packaged all the updates into big yearly versions you
paid for all at once, rather than getting things as they are done? That sucks.

If you still want updates as they come, either they are free if you own the
version (in which case, you feel cheated if you buy a version then a new one
comes out soon after), meaning people will avoid buying the product until the
new version comes out.

With the year of upgrades included, it works. Now, in your case, you want to
have your cake and eat it too - you still benefit from the upgrades the
software got while you were not using it. You were not paying for using the
software (that's the new model), you were paying to receive updates, so you
either pay continuously for them at a reduced price, or pay for a new year
when it runs out.

In fact, what is kind of crazy is what you are saying is you only want to pay
for the software while you are using it, which is exactly the new model. You
want to use the version you have forever, get all the updates, and also not
pay when you don't use it. How is that going to be a sane business model from
the other side?

Hey, sure, it's not worth it for you - that's your call, but what business
model would actually be good enough for your standards?

~~~
gdulli
Is it crazy when Windows does it? I paid for Windows 7, I didn't want to get
Windows 8 when it first came out. Later on Windows 8 was improved. I was
eligible for upgrade pricing because I owned Windows 7. You can argue that
this is too customer-friendly if you want, that's subjective. But you're
acting like my expectation is unusual or unprecedented, which is wrong.

~~~
Latty
Microsoft is desperate to push people to upgrade, because the value of a new
version is non-obvious to most and the normal upgrade path is getting a new
PC. They are making a choice to do something that is worse for them in some
ways because having people using the newer versions is very important to them
(as proven by them flat-out giving away 10).

------
trebor
My first reaction to this is gritting my teeth. But I went and looked and did
the math. And I noticed that current users with a perpetual license (the "old"
licensing model) can upgrade to the new pricing for the old renewal cost. EG:

    
    
        PHPStorm renewal $49 (personal)
        PHPStorm SaaS $49/year (from existing license, doesn't change)
        PHPStorm SaaS $79/year (promo)
        PHPStorm SaaS $99/year (after Jan 31st 2016)
    

> __Yearly plan special offer for customers who have purchased a perpetual
> license. Offer to be redeemed no later than Jan 1, 2017.

For the terms of that upgrade: [https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-
gb/articles/204249752-What...](https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-
gb/articles/204249752-What-constitutes-an-Existing-Customer-Discount-)

> 1\. The offer is available to customers with or without upgrade
> subscriptions _regardless of the subscription status_ , provided a customer
> switches their existing licenses to the new model _before January 1, 2017_

> 2\. The offer only applies to switching existing licenses to the new model.
> _Purchases for additional users will fall under the standard pricing_

> 3\. _Once the offer is used, the special price is available indefinitely
> until payments are canceled or paused._

Emphasis mine.

Looks like an irritating change, perhaps, but for existing customers you __can
__lock your price in at its current renewal rate for the smaller products. The
downside is that you __will __be renewing yearly, because if you pause the
payment your rate might change.

------
cromwellian
JetBrains is in a tough market where they charge for what other competitors
give away for free. They do so by making awesome products but doing that takes
money and resources. If you want them to continue to invest in making the
worlds best IDEs, you should be cheering this decision. They charge a pittance
for such products.

Seriously, for the price of IntelliJ ultimate, most programmers will earn that
in 2-3 hours of work. Your paying 2-3 hours of your time for a product that
saves you hundreds of hours, and helps you earn a high white collar salary.

I just don't get people who whine about the pricing of their tools. Have you
looked at the costs of video production, 3d and 2d art programs? Profession
music creation software? Or any enterprise software for godsakes?

JetBrains has fought hard to survive and thrive in a cut throat market where
most people use free tools and don't want to buy anything. They make a premium
product and sell it for less than a cheap smartphone you upgrade every 2
years.

Maybe they can please people who want the false comfort of ownership by
boosting the price of the non-rent edition.

~~~
chucky_z
As an interesting perspective, I don't know a single person who pirates any
JetBrains software. All the programmers I know use their software exclusively
and pay for it.

I can name many people who pirate all sorts of video production, 3d, and 2d
art programs.

As for myself, maybe I'm a curmudgeon, but I try to avoid paid software at all
costs. I used Sublime Text briefly, but switched back to vim when I found a
good combination of plugins (caveat: I do little programming).

------
agentgt
Ironically I just switched back to Eclipse Mars from Intellij. Intellij is an
awesome product and for certain development environments it hands down beats
Eclipse... but if your just coding in a JVM language (Java, Scala..) Eclipse
Mars is pretty decent. For me It really was never the features that made me
want to use Intellij but the simple fact that shit never seems to get fixed in
Eclipse version after version.

Eclipse Mars is better than previous versions but there are still ancient
bugs:

Mac OSX scrolling:
[https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=366471](https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=366471)

Font Line Height (thank you Atom for supporting this)
[https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=26765](https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=26765)

I have like 10 more bugs that I wish I could pay to have fixed. Intellij had
this problem too (but lesser) and I really wish a company had some sort of
pricing option to have certain bugs/features fast tracked. Eclipse takes
donations and Intellij purchaes but you can't specifically say hey I will give
you $1000 if you just fix xyz bug/feature. I know there are services that do
this on opensource projects... I just wish that companies did it as well.

Speaking of Atom I just created an Eclipse Color theme that looks like One
Dark syntax
[https://gist.github.com/agentgt/fcaf75eb8acf92e08926](https://gist.github.com/agentgt/fcaf75eb8acf92e08926)
. Combined with the Dark widget theme (yes Mars seems to have made this
better) it really looks pretty decent on Mac. Its nice because I use Atom for
frontend work so I have consistency theme wise.

~~~
mdaniel
_I have like 10 more bugs that I wish I could pay to have fixed._

Are you aware of Bountysource?
[https://www.bountysource.com/](https://www.bountysource.com/) While I believe
the audience size for it isn't super large, it's also conceivable that you
could post a link to the Bountysource as a comment on the Bugzilla issue, at
which point your incentive becomes more visible.

I don't know if you were just using a number as an example, but $1000 will
likely get you some real traction on a bug - provided, of course, that the
upstream project (Eclipse, in this case) will accept the work.

~~~
alblue
Note that Eclipse supports donations directly:

[https://mmilinkov.wordpress.com/2015/08/19/users-can-now-
fun...](https://mmilinkov.wordpress.com/2015/08/19/users-can-now-fund-
development-work-on-eclipse/)

Be wary of random donation sites that are unconnected to the host organisation
- the chance of any real money flowing back upstream on average is zero.

------
GordonS
For ReSharper users, some decent open source alternatives are Refactoring
Essentials (previously called NR6Pack) and Code Cracker:

[http://vsrefactoringessentials.com](http://vsrefactoringessentials.com)

[https://github.com/code-cracker/code-cracker](https://github.com/code-
cracker/code-cracker)

------
vermooten
Thank god Eclipse has gotten very usable in recent years.

~~~
keyle
Really? I mean I used Eclipse for years prior to VS and IntelliJ. IntelliJ
wins hands down. This pricing model though.... upsets me.

~~~
kisstheblade
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)

------
invaliduser
As someone managing a small software edition company and selling yearly
subscription licenses, I can totally get their business decision. Otherwise,
you get the "Microsoft Word 97" effect, when people still use the same old
software for 15 years, never upgrade, and complain about your software.

Having a recurring revenue is the best way to be able to manage a company,
because it gives you a better view for your next years' budgets, and you can
more easily plan investment and hirings.

What is wrong, is probably how jetbrain seems to change their pricing and
businell model far too often, lacking direction, and pretending it's for the
customers (it's only very indirectly for the customers benefit). Besides, I
wouldn't mind paying whatever they want if they would just improve their
release quality so that I don't get afraid of breaking my project everytime I
update.

------
killface
Yeah, if you didn't see this coming, you haven't been keeping up. Their yearly
upgrades? It's no coincidence that intellij 14 came out in 2014, 13 in 2013...

If you have kept up versions as I have, it's practically no different. If this
means we get features sooner rather than waiting for a whole major version
upgrade, I'm happy.

Yes, Adobe had a big clusterfuck when they did it, but you know who hasn't had
as big of one? Microsoft Office. I subscribe to their office 365. 10 bucks a
month for 5 computers, the whole office suite. I'll happily pay that.

And besides, there's always the community edition if for some reason your
120k/yr job doesn't let you afford 100 bucks per year...

People just have a meltdown anytime anything changes... chill the fuck out for
a few minutes and let's see what happens.

------
hbt
Intellij has no choice but to do this. Otherwise they lose revenue.

They have mature software products and people are not going to renew the
license every year for a minor update. Most of their products are so mature
that you can buy them once and never look back.

So how do they make up for this one time sale? Switch to a subscription model
and convince users it's in their best interest.

Frankly, I don't care about paying money every month; IntelliJ is worth the
price. However, I never update software unless there is a major bug or major
features. Updating software is always a gamble and if you customize it, it
often requires additional work (deprecated plugins, invalid keymap, new bugs
etc.)

I hope they get this right and find the right business model to stay afloat
without ruining the relationship they have with their customers.

------
awjr
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.

~~~
masklinn
> 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)

~~~
awjr
"server" language? You may have heard that Javascript is doing rather well
these days ;)

~~~
masklinn
And you may have tried to understand the point rather than look for places
where you could land a snide comment. Alas, you chose otherwise.

~~~
awjr
Well I'm not sure why you would put "server" in quotes.

~~~
masklinn
Because they're not solely for web servers, and because as you so astutely
noted javascript can be used in a server role.

------
ohitsdom
I think Resharper is in trouble. This licensing change, the new "refactoring"
features in Visual Studio 2015, and the lower barrier for new tools to be
created due to Roslyn are all going to have an impact.

------
geophile
Will there still be a Community Edition? (Free, with reduced capabilities.)

~~~
masklinn
Yes.

~~~
thawkins
Not for phpstorm

~~~
masklinn
There has never been a community edition of phpstorm.

------
zeveb
What I don't get is why a developer would ever use proprietary software in the
first place. I code—it's what I do. I want to tools to be excellent,
certainly, and I don't want to have to spend a lot of time fixing them where
they aren't, but I want to be _able_ to improve them for my use cases. Who
else in the world is as capable at knowing what I need as…me?

If you use proprietary software, you're at the mercy of the vendor for
features and, as this shows, for pricing and pricing model changes.

~~~
manigandham
Please... some of us need to get work done and are perfectly happy to pay
someone else to give us good quality products.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean it's worth doing yourself.

~~~
jordigh
Why not pay them to do it for you _and_ also keep the ability to do it
yourself, should you ever need it?

~~~
rebootthesystem
Because I have exactly zero interest in deviating from what I should be
focusing on (my business, my product, my clients, my revenue stream) to go
dork around with a text/code editor.

Doing so, in the context of a real working business with clients, projects,
timelines, deadlines and deliverables would be irresponsible if you can simply
pay a company for which that product IS their product and business to deliver
what you need and support it.

I can see messing around with FOSS as a hobby but unless you are a huge
company that can afford to lose clock cycles to your devs playing with FOSS or
a medium size company for whom FOSS is a a business it just doesn't make
sense.

The vast majority of software developers across all disciplines (there's a
huge world outside of Silicon Valley, Web Dev and Mobile) have exactly zero
need or interest in deviating from their mission to go fix their tools.

This is the same reason the vast majority of software developers (again, think
outside web folk) have exactly zero interest in vim. It is an utter waste of
time compared to point-click-go-go-go.

~~~
zeveb
> Because I have exactly zero interest in deviating from what I should be
> focusing on (my business, my product, my clients, my revenue stream) to go
> dork around with a text/code editor.

You can improve your productivity (i.e., increase your revenue) by improving
your tools.

A blacksmith makes his tools; a developer should be want to extend his
environment.

> unless you are a huge company that can afford to lose clock cycles to your
> devs playing with FOSS

It's not a loss: it's an investment which pays dividends.

> The vast majority of software developers across all disciplines (there's a
> huge world outside of Silicon Valley, Web Dev and Mobile) have exactly zero
> need or interest in deviating from their mission to go fix their tools.

I have exactly zero interest in hiring or working with someone who is
uninterested in improving his productivity.

> This is the same reason the vast majority of software developers (again,
> think outside web folk) have exactly zero interest in vim. It is an utter
> waste of time compared to point-click-go-go-go.

Both vim and emacs are far better and faster at moving structures of code
around than the vast majority of GUI editors. Better and faster means…more
revenue for less effort. And it's fun!

~~~
rebootthesystem
You are confusing matters and overstating productivity factors. Editors, yes,
including vim, have nearly zero impact on the timeline for any non-trivial
project. The time devoted to all things outside of typing code dwarfs any
gains had by counting keystrokes with vim. It's an illusion of the first
order.

Now, good tools, such as the JetBrains tools can have an impact that has
little to do with productivity. We do hardware and software development. It is
useful to have a tool that has the potential to feel like you are doing pair
programming by helping you along. Why? Because if you are popping between
Verilog and Python with a range of other languages across server, desktop and
embedded while using multiple tools and IDE's you start valuing tools that can
help you context switch. And, no, I do not want to waste time messing with
source for the two dozen tools we use on a regular basis. And, no, in this
context vim has no real measurable value whatsoever.

My guess is you might disagree. And that's OK. If your context is web
development you simply don't have enough of a view of the rest of the tech
ecosystem to understand. If you've never run a tech business you will not have
had the financial feedback loop that allows you to understand these issues. I
can improve productivity by a far larger margin by providing every workstation
with three large monitors, lots of memory and making sure people work
reasonable hours and don't burn out than through some magical editor that also
requires my engineers to even as much as look at source due to shortcomings.

In fact, I can, and have, improved productivity dramatically by having
everyone work half days on Fridays while being very flexible with daily
schedules and liberal with vacation times. As an example, I had one engineer
ask me if he could take a few days off to go to a concert in London. I said
"send pictures", paid him for the time he was away and did not take vacation
days off.

We are a team, we know what our mission is and we get shit done. We are not
factory workers counting keystrokes per second. We are knowledge workers,
which automatically means we spend far more time on things other than typing
code.

Of course, you are free to do as you wish.

~~~
zeveb
> The time devoted to all things outside of typing code dwarfs any gains had
> by counting keystrokes with vim. It's an illusion of the first order.

Editors are, or should be, the sole tool necessary to sculpt a system. Using
poor languages, yes, there's a lot of ritual outside of coding which is
necessary. With powerful languages, the design is the code and the code is the
design and it all lives within an editor.

The editor is the interface to the documentation; it's the interface to the
running system; it's an interface to the debugger; it's the interface to the
_world_.

> Because if you are popping between Verilog and Python with a range of other
> languages across server, desktop and embedded while using multiple tools and
> IDE's you start valuing tools that can help you context switch. And, no, I
> do not want to waste time messing with source for the two dozen tools we use
> on a regular basis. And, no, in this context vim has no real measurable
> value whatsoever.

Which is why I use emacs, which is able to provide a seamless interface
between server, desktop, laptop and embedded environments, in which context
switching simply doesn't have to be necessary. Emacs provides a whole heck of
a lot more than vim. Vim is a powerful editor; emacs is an ultra-powerful
environment.

Yes, it's also important to have large monitors, lots of memory and a great
work environment. And kudos to you (honestly) for providing that.

> We are knowledge workers, which automatically means we spend far more time
> on things other than typing code.

Which is why I use a tool which enables me to work with units of knowledge,
not just letters and symbols.

~~~
rebootthesystem
> Editors are, or should be, the sole tool necessary to sculpt a system.

Absolutely not true. My guess is you are a web developer.

I am not going to spar with you. Engineering is a world that goes way beyond
web development. I urge you to consider there's far more out there than what
you might have been exposed to. To think that everything starts and ends with
a text editor is a bit myopic.

------
alt_f4
Yet another reason for me to stick with Eclipse.

When will people realise that true & complete OSS is the only answer.

~~~
joshstrange
When it stops being a massive PITA to use...

I HATE Eclipse, it's a massively bloated POS IMHO and I wouldn't touch it with
a 10' pole. Eclipse is what drove me FAR away from IDE's until a friend
recommended JetBrains to me and I found how awesome it was.

OSS fanatics drive me up a wall. I don't have unlimited amounts of time to
customise something a ton just to make it useable. I'm not going to make my
life harder on purpose so that I can sit on my high horse. I want to get
things done not be constantly futzing around with display drivers, font
rendering, icon sets, endless pages of customization, etc. Do you have full
control in OSS? Yes, but the defaults normally suck.

I want something that takes me to 80-90% on day 1, I don't care if I can take
it to 100% in OSS (it normally starts at 20% at best), it's simply not worth
my time. Now given 2 products, one closed and one OSS that perform equally or
close to equally well out of the box I will lean towards OSS but I'm not going
to go out of my way to use it just so I can tout my neck-bearded-ness. Money =
Time and I'm not interested in wasting the "non-renewable" one of the two.

Note: none of this applies to servers, linux is the only thing I'd ever
consider using on a server. This is primarily aimed at OSS programs and OS's
(Open Office or whatever they are calling it now, Eclipse, Linux on the
desktop, etc)

~~~
konradb
I'm with you in terms of productivity/results etc. I remember when I started
with a new team that were all Eclipse. I gave it my all. I really did. No
doubt much of it came down to familiarity but there was something about it
that I couldn't jive with. It seemed to introduce concepts/abstractions that
didn't need to exist. It crashed a bunch. There were more steps involved with
everything. I had pick up after it. It was slow. Then I said, you know what? I
can't hack this, I'm going back to IDEA. Suddenly it felt like I was in a
ferrari rather than a trabant. Fully accept that a lot of that was down to me
not being a particularly fast learner, that I was used to IDEA in the first
place etc.

I'm happy to pay Jetbrains three times the amount I pay to continue with it.
This deal is great for me because I wanted to use PyCharm and CLion, and have
historically used Rubymine, and the amount I have to pay to have everything
isn't that far off what I pay already.

I consider it money well paid to be able to be more productive. Understand
other people feel differently... it's nice to be idealogically consistent and
beholden to no-one. That's worth a lot to many.

------
mindcrime
We use a subscription model at Fogbeam, but here's the twist: all our software
is open source, and you're free to use it as you like, with or without a
subscription.

So why buy a subscription at all?

Because you get the kinds of things big companies care about: certification,
maintenance, support, indemnification, somebody to sue if things don't work, a
vendor to shift blame onto if the shit hits the fan, a discount on
professional services work, perpetual upgrades, priority access to influence
the roadmap and direction of the product, etc. Subscriptions are also a win
for customers in that (depending on the details) they may be able to pay for a
subscription out of an operational budget, rather than needing to go to some
committee and get approval for a large one-time capital expenditure. And with
subscriptions you are paying a portion of the cost in future, inflated,
dollars instead of today's dollars.

Of course, like any vendor who does OSS, we run the risk of having a lot of
people using our software and never paying, but that's just something we
accept.

But here's the thing... we don't sell development tools - IDEs and the like.
Our stuff is backend/middle-ware that costs in the tens of thousands of
dollars and up (for companies with thousands of employees, anyway), which
makes things like worrying about capital expenditures more of an issue. At the
kind of price-points you are talking about for IDEs and what-not, I'm not sure
the advantages of a subscription (from the customer POV) really carry much
weight.

~~~
mreiland
I would like to see the software contract that includes indemnification for
the software.

~~~
mindcrime
We don't have the final wording all worked out for all of that stuff. We've
been pretty focused on product stuff for the past while, and only recently got
to a point where we have a product actually available for sell, and we're
still working on contracts / licenses and all that. But what I can tell you is
that our approach will probably look a lot like what Red Hat does[1].

Basically, it's a guarantee that if you get sued for using our software
(patent infringement, whatever) then we protect you from any fallout from
that.

[1]: [http://www.redhat.com/en/about/open-source-
assurance](http://www.redhat.com/en/about/open-source-assurance)

~~~
mreiland
So you're not really indemnifying the software use itself, that's where the
confusion came from.

~~~
mindcrime
I'm not sure I understand the distinction you're making there.

We defend the company from issues using our software, arising from a 3rd
party's IP claims. We wouldn't defend them if they used our software as part
of an effort to hack into the Facebook's user database and stage a massive
identity theft scheme.

~~~
mreiland
_software use_

as in, problems that occur from actually _using_ the software. As opposed to
IP claims which is typically over the source code, not the software itself.

For example, if you write a realtime scheduling component that Toyota ends up
using in their vehicle software, and someone dies due to a problem with the
realtime scheduling, you do not protect Toyota from the resulting lawsuit.

------
kuyfiuyg
Is there any good Java IDE for emacs?

~~~
logicchains
I'm not sure about IDEs, but if you install Evil mode you get a pretty awesome
text editor.

------
brudgers
The problem for any company providing a workflow solution is that if you solve
the customer's problem by providing a stable workflow then there is no little
for the customer to upgrade. Their workfolow is profitable, and the solution
is analogous to a band-saw in a wood-shop: a fixture.

On the other hand, upgrading to a new version with new features is a risk.
When none of the previous version's features changed, there's still the
reconfiguration cost...and usually previous version features do change if for
no other reason than UI. Even a compelling new feature entails the disruption
of changing processes.

Ideally, the best long term strategy for a tools company is a subscription
model that pushes no features and results in more or less the same
profitability for their customers in the end: for example by exactly
offsetting the gains from features with the cost of switching. The sweet spot
is technical progress accompanied by business stasis. AutoDesk is the master
at this...they started moving toward subscriptions almost twenty years ago.
They got away from selling platforms and focused on features, and their
customers are all locked into yearly cycles of disrupting their workflow and
looking to features for redemption.

------
rebootthesystem
They need to do a better job explaining the licenses.

[https://www.jetbrains.com/toolbox/](https://www.jetbrains.com/toolbox/)

I can't find anything that explains the difference between the individual vs.
company/organization licenses.

Are these still single-developer licenses?

Why does a company have to pay twice as much as the individual license?

That's just silly. I'll have my devs buy their own licenses and reimburse
them. People are not stupid, you know? Because these licenses expire on a
monthly basis there really isn't a reason for a company to "own" the product.

With the prior licensing scheme it made sense because the product never
expired. You could continue using it even if you didn't need the upgrades. You
were, in fact, purchasing an asset. Not too different from buying a set of
wrenches for your toolbox, they might not be the latest in a year, but they
work just as well.

With this setup there is no reason whatsoever for a company to pay double
monthly fees. That's just silly. I'd like to see someone justify a reason to
charge a business twice as much. Please don't say "because you make a profit".
This is like Ford charging you twice as much for an F150 because you buy it
through your business.

Regarding the company/organization license: Does one license allow one
developer to work with, say, IntelliJ while another uses PyCharm? I have not
ask. Again, there's precious little on the website to explain the terms and
conditions of each license.

~~~
sgdread
If you're reimbursing personal licenses, it's actually violation if EULA [1]

[1] [https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-
gb/articles/200544871-5-Ca...](https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-
gb/articles/200544871-5-Can-a-company-reimburse-my-personal-license-purchase-)

~~~
rebootthesystem
I am not. We already own permanent licenses for what we need and do not intend
on moving to the monthly plan under current conditions.

I am simply pointing out people are not stupid. Doubling the monthly cost just
because it is a business can't be justified and this is bound to lead to
people gaming the system.

Again, pick a service, say, gardener, and have them charge you twice as much
to mow exactly the same size lawn just because you are a business. What will
happen is they'll be treated to a big "fuck you" and someone else will get the
business.

Someone needs to tell me what they deliver to a business user that supports
charging twice as much. There's certainly zero difference in the already
questionable level of support, so, where is the justification?

To me that's bordering on being offensive.

------
radicalbyte
It looks like they're going to review the changes:

[http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2015/09/04/we-are-
listening](http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2015/09/04/we-are-listening)

Personally I would find the pricing more reasonable if the "individual
developer" licenses could be used by small businesses and freelancers.

------
steedsofwar
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.

------
rpwverheij
I'm an indy developer who travels & works at various places in the world. I'm
often working a place deep in the jungle, where there is some electricity but
no internet. Not being able to work if I don't connect to the internet within
30 days will indeed decrease my happiness with JetBrains big time :(

------
konradb
Perhaps if they have a model where after you've had a solid 12 months of
subscriptions behind you, you can stop and use the last good versions you had,
that would fix the issues people are complaining about.

That would lose you the 'renewing' discount, but it wouldn't stop the concern
about the IDE's not working.

------
nutate
Community Edition is still totally awesome for what it is right?

------
jbtule
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.

------
lewisl9029
That's really too bad.

I actually used and liked WebStorm at one point. I've since switched to Atom,
but I still occasionally miss some of the more advanced refactoring and
navigation features that indexing and static analysis made possible.

Every time JetBrains released a new version of WebStorm I usually try to take
a thorough look through the release notes and sometimes become tempted to give
it another try.

But this new subscription model has managed to completely kill any enthusiasm
I had left for WebStorm and other JetBrains products.

As a side note, I really hope this doesn't mean Cursive is going to have to
switch to the same subscription model.

------
codewithcheese
It seems there is a simple solution. You pay the subscription monthly, until
after 1 year you own the current version. If you stop the subscription at that
point you don't get rolling updates or SLA support.

------
jim_greco
Jetbrains charges way too little for such a ridiculously good product.

------
MichaelGG
Microsoft recently did the same thing, requiring you to sign in with a
Microsoft Account to continually re-activate Visual Studio (90 days, I think).
So now, even with an MSDN sub, after it expires, you don't get the software.
Rather significant change. Though, with BizSpark and other programs it will
probably only impact larger companies.

Plus when customers view changes like this as unfair or unethical, they
suddenly find themselves caring a lot less about using a disassembler and
changing some jumps.

------
ljw1001
No company that believes in what they're doing announces a major change on a
Friday, before a major US holiday. That's what you do when you want the
reaction to die quickly.

------
dec0dedab0de
I'll be renewing PyCharm this week, but will likely start brushing up on
Eclipse/PyDev for next year. I find the idea of software disabling itself
disgusting.

------
profinger
I hate this model in general just because I can't just pay a larger amount
once and have it forever.

Aside from that, this reinforces my coding minimalism. I don't have a need for
all of these weird extra things that just make "life easier" about 5% of the
time while screwing with normal typing 95% of the time (in my case at least).
I am perfectly happy with standard visual studio and notepad for anything that
isn't .net.

------
nadams
> 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).

------
bb0wn
And this is one of the many reasons why I've not used paid IDEs. I feel bad
for everyone over a barrel with JetBrains because they've dedicated so much of
their time developing in their lovely IDEs (many of my co-workers use their
products.)

This is not to say that a SaaS model is necessarily bad... it's just that, as
a user, one is now beholden to the whims of a company for what is perhaps the
most critical part of their work flow.

~~~
jonhohle
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Stallman -
[http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-
read.en.html](http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html)

------
chinathrow
If someone at JetBrains is reading this: Having 2 licenses paid and planned to
renew when I decide what great.

This, not so much. Officially looking for alternatives.

------
bluebeard13
Yeah, really bad....b4, we had a choice of when we would upgrade, if it's
worth it, was there enough innvovation, etc. now, 'you' are forced to keep
paying for upgrades, even if you don't need them right away, or want to just
skip one. Sucks really bad...As a longtime user 10+years, I'm out...ransom
does not play well with me.

------
fridek
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.

~~~
danieldk
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.

------
kailuowang
JetBrian used to have to improve the product significantly every major release
so that people would pay for the new version. Just want to point out that by
changing to the new subscription model, they no longer have that drive.

Of course there are still other reasons for innovating their product, it's
just one less.

~~~
timrichard
Hmm, time will tell. I've been using IDEA since 2008, but switched to WebStorm
a couple of years ago because I wanted to get the new JS features and
extensions sooner (and didn't need the Java Enterprise bits).

As someone who upgrades WebStorm within an hour of a new version being
released, I'm hoping the new subscription model will mean they push out
improvements whenever they're ready, rather than waiting for a major release
to showcase.

Totally understand the angst on here about the IDE not working if you cancel
your subscription, but I guess I'm already in that mindset from using services
like Linode and BrowserStack.

As a serial upgrader, the WebStorm subscription price looks okay. Over the
years, I've considered the IDE more of a co-worker than a tool (should credit
Hector the Inspector as a great Wingman). If you're billing for your hours I
still think the product is a no-brainer, but understand this would be a
frustrating development for a more casual user.

------
PhrosTT
For 600 people complaining:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3ji148/jetbrai...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3ji148/jetbrains_toolbox_monthly_yearly_subscription_for/)

------
adaml_623
So if JetBrains goes bankrupt and the license servers go down then we all have
a month to sort out a new IDE

------
steve_taylor
This was inevitable. Businesses want month-to-month licensing and now I expect
JetBrains will see solid growth driven by their business customers. I would
rather see a cashed-up JetBrains acquire - let's say - Xamarin than the
opposite outcome, which would be an unmitigated disaster.

------
jbob2000
Meh, the only real issue there is the phoning home. The other issues he points
out seem pretty contrived.

~~~
gorohoroh
JetBrains rep here.

"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.

~~~
jbob2000
Thanks for the reply! It's actually not an issue for me at all, my comment was
more about the legitimacy of the OP's arguments.

------
rebootthesystem
We use PyCharm and love it. Could we do without it? Yes, of course. The tool
makes a number of things more convenient but it isn't indispensable. That
said, I'd hate to see it go.

One thing that has always bothered me about JetBrains is the "personality" of
their support. It is isn't good. We haven't needed a lot of it, maybe 2 or 3
incidents since PyCharm came out (we adopted right away). Yet, there's a
bothersome lag in support (I am not talking about international time zones) as
well as a lack of quality. It's almost --but not quite-- condescending in
feel.

I do understand there might be language and cultural differences at play here.
I also have experience with German companies (not just software). Their
approach to customer service can be very dry and very different from what you
might experience in the US. I am guessing the Czech Republic might be similar.

I know these are generalizations that could be way off base. In the case of
JetBrains, if the product was not good we would have stopped using them purely
based on the substandard support.

As far as paying monthly. No. Thanks. I want my software to work and work
reliably. If I chose not to upgrade for a year or two, these tools need to
work. A monthly plan with 30 day call-the-mothership is a non-starter for me.
I will not, ever, buy into something like that for my business. I want less
overhead, not more. And I don't want a situation where if things are tight for
a few months we lose half of our tools. Buying into something like that would
be a really dumb decision on the part of a business owner or manager.

I look at something like MS Office. We purchased licenses back in 2007. We
have not needed any of the new features. And so, our 15 or so licenses work
just fine for what we need to do and we do not need to spend another dime to
use the software. From a business perspective that is the right way to use
tools and the right way to make purchases. You do not want to bleed money on a
regular basis for software updates you don't need or updates that don't make
enough of a material impact to justify their cost.

Anyhow, I hope JetBrains reconsiders. We have been looking at some of their
other products but will not even consider them if they are converted to
monthly subscription products. If they insist on taking this approach I
suspect products like SublimeText will see a boost in adoption. Yes, not the
same thing, but not the end of the world and it is a really, really good
product with a very friendly license.

------
foobarbecue
They gave me a free version of WebStorm because I'm a hobbyist open source
developer. I love it, but I'm obviously not going to pay $80 a year. Does
anyone know if they're going to continue having some kind of free option for
non-corporate use?

~~~
hhariri
We've never had a free option for non-corporate users. We provide free
licenses for Students, OSS projects and certain other groups. In addition, we
give discounts of 50% for start-ups. All of that will continue.

~~~
foobarbecue
I'm a student with an OSS project, so that's good to hear. As long as you have
this great policy about OSS, I can't complain!

------
crimsonalucard
I know exactly why this is happening. It's the same for adobe: cracks and
hacks.

The keygen for jetbrains currently unlocks ultimate mode on all products for
100 years. It's not hard for your average script kiddie to find.

------
eweise
Bummer. Been using Intellij for almost a decade. Will give Eclipse another
try.

------
balabaster
Moving to a subscription model for 1 thing is okay, perhaps 2, or even 3. But
with _every_ company gradually moving to subscription models, it is emptying
out our wallets every month and removing more and more of our income to
maintain the status quo.

From my own perspective, and I know this doesn't apply to all, but I cannot
imagine I'm the only person with this viewpoint:

I'm sick of other developers saying things like: "You know what? For the
amount developers earn, $X is a small price to pay." You're right, $X for a
single piece of software is a small price. But when you add the cost of your
MSDN license here, your JetBrains license there, your Xamarin
university/license, O'Reilly Safari License, PluralSight license and countless
other licenses and software purchases to do our jobs - _all_ of which are
gradually moving towards month-by-month subscription models with excessively
large combined annual overheads, it cuts more and more into your budget... and
not to forget that the income you make doesn't _just_ pay for an ever
revolving cycle of tools to maintain your competitiveness as these arguments
seem to forget [unless you're still living in Mom's basement and all your
income is expendable or can feed the endless software-as-a-service lifestyle].
It's also used to ensure that your kids get a good education so they can make
their own valuable contributions to society; that you're able to live
comfortably and not worry about where your next meal is coming from; that your
family is safe and secure and well prepared for the unexpected; medical plans;
retirement plans; mortgage; vehicle payments; the list goes on... _all_ of
which costs money - every month!

I'm growing tired of companies feeling like they can reach into my pocket
month after month and take every spare penny for "services rendered." At what
point will people turn around and say "Enough's enough! My money is mine!" I'm
happy to buy products when they move me forward, but I hate paying monthly
subscriptions on the off chance that you're going to continue provide updates
that may or may not benefit me in the longer term.

As a company providing software, I'm not purchasing you as a service. I'm
purchasing your product. When I work for a company that pays me every month,
I'm selling myself to them as a service - to do their bidding and write the
code they want. If I'm to pay for you as a service, then the money I'm paying
you had better be providing what _I_ need to do my job more effectively, just
like if I pay a cleaner to come clean the house, I'm not paying for them to
develop makeup products that benefit their other clients while I don't wear
makeup. I want the option of buying the product that _does_ help me do my job
more effectively and then I'll hold on to the rest of my money and allocate it
where that is the case.

------
quaffapint
Biggest problem I have is the need for a live Internet connection. We do all
our work in an offline dev environment.

Now trying to get some licensing server installed in an Enterprise environment
is a PITA.

------
navls
vim remains free and free

------
JeremyMorgan
Meh, $19 a month for all their products sounds like a steal to me. I currently
use many of their products and upgrade every year so this actually saves me
money.

------
rgdzz3
My main IDE right now is VS12 but once a week I use Webstorm for like 2 hours.
Does anyone knows a good alternative to it? Preferably an IDE not a
TextEditor.

------
studentrob
I'd love to see a sentiment breakdown of % of usernames in this thread who
agree vs. disagree on this basic issue. Does a tool exposing this exist?

------
nadgob
I'm one of those who really loves IntelliJ and helped introduce it in our
company. What happens now? One pays more and owns nothing.

payingCustomers--

------
odonnellryan
I'd be surprised if we don't get a good response from them out of this.

------
gjvc
It is astounding to watch a company shoot itself in the head so publicly.

------
azurelogic
Well, looks like I'll be doing some upgrade purchases very soon...

------
cam-
Intellij is one of the few IDEs that it is worth paying for.

------
edpichler
At least it's no so expensive.

~~~
masklinn
* IDEA was 200 + 99/year, new license is 149/year (more expensive from year 3)

* 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.

------
trevorg75
Here's the rub (and the danger of SAAS). This falls into some heavy psychology
so: tl;dr you're a human being, you're going to choose what you think is a
deal but you aren't going to jump through the hoops to get it, you're going to
be screwed.

Here's the science: So taking a simple example. Joe is a damned fine
php/javascript developer. He is in a decent demand as a private contractor.
Joe LOVES Jetbrains' tools. He uses youtrack to keep his work in line, he uses
PHPStorm as his php ide and WebStorm for his javascript and has TeamCity
handling CI.

He gets the news that this is coming in and sees the fanfare and the pricetag
and is like "wow! way to go jetbrains! $19.90 a month for ALL of your tools or
$199 a year?! I mean that's only slightly more than what I'm paying now for my
renewals at the yearly rate and I'd get all of their tools...." but Joe
doesn't have time to look into it Joe is a busy contractor, work is coming in
fast and furious now and besides, his current license doesn't expire until
March. Nothing to see here.

Well winter comes and work slows down as it does during the holidays, except
this year it doesn't pick up in the spring. It's dead slow. It's the end of
February and Joe's considering getting well...a "Joe Job" when the phone rings
and it's a client with a fat contract to put him back on track. But the
project needs PHP version 5.whatever-the-hell-the-new-hotness-is and PHPStorm
only supports up to 5.old-and-busted. Time to download the updates! Oh crap,
his license is expired. Wait didn't he see something a while back about nw
licensing options. He certainly doesn't have the $178 dollars it's gonna cost
him to upgrade PHPStorm and WebStorm right now and he REALLY needs it to do
this project that's going to get him back on track. So he checks the pricing.
Hrmmm $24.90.....wasn't it $19.90 when I looked before. Oh, it was a
promotional. Damn. Joe doesn't have $24.90 either, maybe he can just buy the
updates for the products he uses. Oh look it's only $9.90 for phpstorm and
$9.90 for webstorm for the month...oh wow but together it's MORE than he used
to pay for his renewals! What's going on JetBrains?! He used to only pay $178
a year to renew both products but now it's $198. Well that's a no go. So Joe
decides to do the month to month thing and when the check clears from this job
he'll just update to the full year! So 20 bucks and a couple downloads later
Joe is in business. Wow this new version is great! The Jetbrains devs still
have their stuff together even if their business people don't. He knocks the
project out of the park. Well a month passes and Joe sees another ding on his
credit card for jetbrains....oh yeah he should switch that subscription. He'll
get to it later. Well a year goes buy. Another winter and another slow spring
and another big project to bail Joe out. Only this time Joe doesn't have the
20 bucks to renew that month. Well no big deal Joe can just fire it up and use
the old version he doesn't need the latest and greatest. Except, Joe can't.
The subscription has expired and so has the tool. And so like a shallow friend
when the money ran out so did Jetbrains and left Joe without the tools he
needs. All told over the year, Joe spent $237 dollars on a product he used to
spend only $178 and had nothing to show for it.

I realize there are some things Joe could have done better, bad business
practice etc. but this could very well happen and does all to often. Sure
there are alternatives but the goal of a good business isn't supposed to be to
force you into the arms of an alternative...you might get comfortable there.

------
joesmo
Wow. This is terrible. I'm a user of a few of their products (PHPStorm,
PyCharm, IDEA, and RubyMine), two of which I've paid for and gotten upgrades
for in the past on a fairly regular basis. I've extolled Jetbrains and praised
the to such great lengths you'd think I was an evangelist for them. But now,
it seems like it's time yet again (something I though was over after
discovering Jetbrains) to find a proper IDE.

Their products have been going down in quality. In the latest PHPStorm for
example, I've had serious problems with the debugger not working and it
rewriting my code to put many lines into one (fun!). Jetbrains hasn't released
a new feature that I use on a constant basis for two major versions (multi-
cursor is debatable, but certainly not a daily-basis feature). I seriously
regret upgrading PHPStorm simply because I wasted $129 on a product that's
worse than the previous version in every single way. I asked, but was not
offered a refund. __Not only that, but prices have already doubled in the last
couple of years __, with new versions being $200 instead of $100 as they used
to be (and sometimes they 'd have discounts like the End of The World Sale in
2012 when they were selling PyCharm for $25 and upgrades for $12).

Jetbrains, IMO, is close to failing to provide quality software and now we get
this insanity. The only thing I can hope for is that someone takes this great
platform and start writing plugins for these languages that are better than
Jetbrains (was hard in the past but shouldn't be so now and in the future) or
creates another IDE platform (Eclipse need not apply).

------
venomsnake
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.

~~~
navait
Pretty tough to pirate their products in the first place, and I imagine "phone
home" type applications will only make it harder.

Especially when they already have a community edition in place, I think more
people will use that.

~~~
67726e
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.

------
ihsw
Looks like Atom and related packages are about to get a lot more users.

------
gfodor
There sure is a lot of complaining in this thread. But guess what: JetBrains
makes the best tools in town, and the new pricing model is totally reasonable
(and even beneficial for many folks.)

So, most people writing long screeds are just going to pony up and forget
about it in a few months.

~~~
tobltobs
Basic risk management will forbid to just pony up.

------
phn
The whole post feels like someone took away the "free lunch". C'mon, we can
understand the need to find a business model that works, right? I am having a
hard time believing that they're changing just for the heck of it.

Besides, They have a free version of IntelliJ, making the ultimate edition and
other languages (for which there are probably more, and free, alternatives)
support as "premium".

If their tools are that good, maybe they're worth the money and $119 per year
sounds pretty much like peanuts for anyone that is trying to make money.

------
oneJob
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.

~~~
danieldk
_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.

~~~
atonse
Not so sure about that. JetBrains has excellent products. So, sure, people can
flock to other tools, but they aren't necessarily better tools.

I have gotten so used to using ReSharper, I'm probably 30% less productive
without it.

~~~
epalmer
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.

~~~
dagw
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.

~~~
danieldk
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.

------
chrislgrigg
For companies managing the licenses for their employees, this is a great
change. It's especially true for those who have a few primary languages but
occasionally get contracts or have projects in other languages. For those with
staff sizes in flux -- employees coming and going, contractors in and out,
interns on board for part of the year -- only being responsible for the number
of seats actively in use is extremely helpful, too.

Managing licenses for teams is time-consuming and frustrating. When I worked
in the MSP world, convincing our clients (for whom we were essentially the IT
department) that they had to buy an extra seat or upgrade everyone license or
reminding them that, "No, you upgraded Sally to v5 but the Intern's system has
last year's v4 license, and you have to shell out $X00 right now or they can't
work" was a _constant_ issue. Creative Cloud and Office 360 made everything
better, I expect this to have the same effect for dev teams.

~~~
softawre
You can do this already though. Right now, my team has a license server URI
they type into their editor, and when we're using the software it grabs a
license slot from the server. If that employee left the company they just
wouldn't use the license anymore and there's no cleanup work.

