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> If you have an existing perpetual license, you can use it infinitely, just as the license agreement stated when you purchased it.

My understanding of the agreement is that you can use the software infinitely with the version that was available on the last day of the subscription term.

As languages and frameworks change, it seems inevitable that everyone who wants to continue working with the latest stable version will be forced to subscribe via the Toolbox (because the renewal of the perpetual license is no longer supported), at which point they no longer own the software they are paying for.

Your understanding of the agreement is correct.

On the other hand, as languages and frameworks change, they will not necessarily be supported by your current IDE. In this case, with a perpetual licensing model you're simply left with a license that you don't use anymore, and you're buying a new license to another IDE. With subscriptions, you switch between them as necessary: either by cancelling subscription to one of them and subscribing to another or by maintaining a subscription to all IDEs (which will also be available starting Nov 2.)

> On the other hand, as languages and frameworks change, they will not necessarily be supported by your current IDE. In this case, with a perpetual licensing model you're simply left with a license that you don't use anymore, and you're buying a new license to another IDE.

I'm not sure I really follow this bit, would you mind clarifying?

I currently have a perpetual license for PhpStorm. Throughout the year, I'm aware many RFCs are created for the PHP language which may or may not be accepted and be incorporated into the language. Currently, I feel pretty confident in knowing that if a language change is made, the PhpStorm developers will update the IDE to support it and I'll be able to download the new version at no extra cost (assuming it was released during the year following the day I purchased the perpetual license).

Would there ever be a situation where this is not the case? Surely PhpStorm will always support the latest version of PHP, unless you're planning on a separate Php7Storm IDE or something?

Your understanding of how perpetual licenses with upgrade subscriptions work is correct.

Also, you can still be pretty confident that as a language support by an IDE (PhpStorm in your case) evolves, new versions will be supported by this very IDE, and we don't have any plans to release a separate Php7Storm :)

I was referring to a different kind of change where you might switch from PHP to Ruby, from C# to Java. C# and PHP are naturally not the best combination to support in the same IDE, meaning you might switch your tools as you go from language to language.

> Also, you can still be pretty confident that as a language support by an IDE (PhpStorm in your case) evolves, new versions will be supported by this very IDE, and we don't have any plans to release a separate Php7Storm :)

But you can also be confident that 5 years in the future, if you stop paying you will have only 1 choice:

To use the version that supported PHP 7, a deprecated, unsecure and phased out version (or at least, that's what I expect from PHP 7 by the year 2020).

In the past you had the peace of mind that you could continue using the version that supported PHP <current - 1> if you stopped paying.

That peace of mind was one of the most important features of PhpStorm, a feature not implemented in the software, but in the licensing terms.

Languages dont change that fast, this is more about screwing more money out of the client base, dont try and pass it off as a benifit.

I just bought 2 more phpstorm corporate licences last week, for a trial to see if my two top guys like it, with a view to a departmental rollout. Now im going to have to unload that project as we could never justify a model like this. Where we would lose access to our tools if decide to cut back on the tools budget for a while or stretch it out a bit.

According to the post you replied to, if you decide to cut back on the tools budget, you could still continue using the version that was released on the last day of your subscription. You just wouldn't get updates.

I believe you have misunderstood the grand-parent post.

the agreement is that you can use the software infinitely with the version that was available on the last day of the subscription term.

Is true for the old licensing model, but not the new model.

As far as I can tell (but JetBrains' attempts to spin this are making it hard to find a definitive statement) if you stop paying your monthly fee, you have to stop using the IDE.

You need to stop living in the Jetbrains marketing department dream world and check back into reality. Losing access to development tools for code that you've already written is not an option. That's why people don't mind paying big chunks of money for good developer tools upfront. Offering a subscription service for dabblers is fine, but not offering a perpetual license alternative is pure insanity.

"Take it or leave it" is not a choice, it's an ultimatum. Please stop presenting this as as something you can use "if you like it" - you're completely discontinuing the old license model and only offering rental of your products starting in November.

Overall, this is a fairly hefty price hike with "reasonable" prices grandfathered in for current customers. Along with the price hike, you're actually delivering a less useful product as well - renting software is not worth as much to me as buying a perpetual license. Judging by the other responses here, I'm not alone in that. Grandfathering in existing users might seem like a good way to appease us, but we aren't stupid.

Jetbrains has always been good to me. I like your products and recommend them to other developers. If this licensing/pricing change goes through as-is, I will not recommend Jetbrains products any more. You talk a lot in the blog post about how great this new licensing model is for us - if you're serious about any of that, give us a real choice. Offer the old model alongside this one and see which one we customers find to be more useful. Anything less would be an admission that, better or not, you're forcing these changes on us without any concern for what we want.

Exactly this.

I'm actually disappointed that JetBrains are trying to spin this as a net positive for most folk, when it seems clear that it isn't.

At least in the comments they're more frank, saying that it's a good move because it's a net positive for them: http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2015/09/03/introducing-jetbra...

Adobe did this - I adapted to alternative tools, which also turned out to be cheaper in the long run.

I love PHPStorm, but I'm not married to it. Once this rental plan goes into effect, it will be time to find something else.

Agreed

Suggestion: if a customer pays for an annual subscription of the software, grant them a perpetual license for the corresponding major milestone version of that product. For instance if I paid for an annual subscription of IntelliJ in 2015, grant me a free perpetual license for IntelliJ 14.

This would be a great compromise, but I suspect that part of moving to the subscription model would be to do away with "one major version release per year" entirely and put out more frequent releases.

It's a tough position for Jetbrains. I've got a lot of sympathy, the annual release + purchase model is very limiting - but changing to a subscription model comes with its own problems that you can't just brush under the rug by offering a promotional price and talking about flexibility.

There is no promotional price, they're charging twice the price they charged in the past, ex. PhpStorm was $49 USD/upgrade, but now it is $99 USD/year.

It says right on the pricing page that it's still $49/year for people who currently have a license.

___for people who currently have a license___