Earlier post on HN: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10170089" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10170089</a><p>430 points & 495 comments (many not very nice)<p>Now everyone is quiet? How about some love here. This is awesome. MS is going with an "All your data is belonging to us" model; we all complain; nothing changes. Out of the blue, Google shuts down another service; we all complain; nothing changes.<p>JetBrains, good on you. Way more than you had to do, and did it with class. Three cheers for JetBrains!
I'm glad they found a way to not buckle on the subscription model. I think having an option to get started on intellj for $10 for a month will really help build their customer base long term. No more $200 sticker shock.<p>And since I'm going to upgrade yearly either way, I don't mind it getting cheaper...
My only issue with their new licensing was the lack of perpetual license, now that they added it even being 1 year behind is a good compromise if I ever have to stop paying, but considering the discount of 40% after the 2nd year it becomes even cheaper than the previous model (at least for intellij).
I'm glad they listened, and modified.<p>One thing that should be heartening to Jetbrains is that people like their products enough to really care about licensing. Its betters than having everyone just quietly walk away to another product.
With the perpetual license, this isn't really that different than the old model for people buying one year at a time. For me, it addresses the main issues I had with the previous plan (IDE no longer working after you stop payment or without Internet connection), albeit with some of the most complex license terms I've ran across.
While I don't like that model, from a business standpoint, it worked extremely well for Adobe (someone pulled a chart the other day showing Adobe revenue skyrocketing since the introduction of creative cloud and the subscription model).<p>It's no surprise many more businesses selling desktop software might be tempted to do this in the future.
This makes me very happy. I've been a JetBrains user since as far back as 2005 when IntelliJ was by far the best option for Java development. I've continued on with RubyMine. Worth every single dime.
this is a very good system, now I wish Adobe did the same: it would definitely not be feasible to give you a full license for PS+LR after a year of $10/mo however they could easily do something like<p>- every software has a 'price', your monthly subscription gives you credits, which you can redeem for 'permanent' versions of the software you want at the same version as when you started subscribing (so downgrade, same as here)<p>- if you own a previous version of the software (say you own full CS6) then you get a discount so that after a year of monthly subscriptions you get a perpetual license for the version when you started the subscription (making it the same as if you had bought a boxed upgrade)<p>this kind of model I think would make it a lot more palatable for people to get onboard with SAAS as you always have the choice of keeping to pay to be with the latest and greatest or stopping to pay and staying with a previous version if it works for you.<p>The only issue I see is that there has to be really good forwards compatibility between the versions, because if I am subscribing and am on V2 and save my project, then end the subscription and get a permanent V1, I should be able to open my V2-saved-work without issues.
I loved the model since as a Developer who gots a Laptop and only gets the most necessary tools (which are paid) and IntelliJ isn't necessary cause of other Options.<p>I need to buy it for my self (i own the laptop). And know I can afford JetBrains since I can pay monthly, which I couldn't.<p>Thanks JetBrains, And thanks for the offline option :)<p>P.S.: I love this one:
> If you’re paying on a monthly basis, the software will > need to perform checks to validate the license using
> JetBrains Account. If it cannot connect to the Internet
> for MORE THAN 30 days, it will show you a message and
> provide a grace time for connection.<p>I hope you don't make more checks and 30 days Offline is enough for me :)
Very confusing transition, but <a href="https://www.jetbrains.com/toolbox/" rel="nofollow">https://www.jetbrains.com/toolbox/</a> is really useful to figure out what you will pay.<p>I think it works out in the end. For me, initial cost would be $250 for the initial two years, $149 for the third year. So I would pay $50 more over three years (and every year onwards) to have access to ALL their products. I think this is a good step. I've previously been in the awkward spot where I chose between PyCharm and PhpStorm because otherwise I'd have to pay in full for both and didn't want the swiss knife IDE.<p>Thanks, Jetbrains!
Said it on the post about this last week, but thanks for listening. I was one of the vocal critics of the original subscription plan, this new one is something that I can live with.
This is great. I think the option to revert to a perpetual license will be a nice amount of market discipline for the team and keep them from stagnating.<p>I actually appreciate the subscription model and I hope that it will enable them to support new frameworks more quickly. Front-end development is moving so quickly that yearly upgrades are not fast enough. For example, JSX is just now available in TypeScript, but WebStorm 10 doesn't support it and WebStorm 11 is still in EAP.
Forcing people to downgrade instead of just disabling updates sucks. It sounds like a frustrating hassle. After their previous announcement, I switched to Atom and I've actually been pretty happy with it.