JetBrains to switch from an ownership model to a rental model for their IDE's | Hacker News Reader

JetBrains to switch from an ownership model to a rental model for their IDE's

blog.jetbrains.com

21 pointsStevePerkins21 comments

I'm of two minds about this. In one way, I was updating Appcode, PhpStorm and IntelliJ once a year anyways, so this is going to be considerably cheaper.

On the other hand, I liked the safety net that if worse comes to worst, I'll be able to keep my existing license forever. Losing this leaves a kind of sour taste behind.

If this was really about simplicity and not at all about profit maximization as they claimed, then they would keep the perpetual usage rights and make the subscriptions only required for the updates.

As it stands now, they could stop developing their products tomorrow and people will still be forced to pay until something better comes around

Are there free non-commercial versions available? I can't rationalize a monthly fee for something that I may not even use for months at a time, and this sort of thing sucks for hobbyists.

On a related note, my other hobby is photography, and I just bought a copy of Lightroom 6. It's just about the only piece of software that Adobe still sells. At $120/year for my very light use, I won't have a copy of Photoshop any time soon.

Maybe these prices are peanuts for someone who makes a living with them, but subscription-only pricing moves me from hearing "You should check out PyCharm!" to being very not interested.

They also sell Photoshop Elements which is surprisingly good in my opinion. I got it in a bundle with Premiere Elements from Amazon for $67 in a deal. If you check Amazon price history websites (such as camel 3x) it has been that price twice already this year.

Now if they update them beyond version 13, I do not know...

PyCharm and IntelliJ both have "Community Editions" that are free, but missing a few features. They're very usable in that state. Something else to note is that Android Studio, which is similarly free to use, is based on IntelliJ CE.

If anyone at JetBrains is reading this, consider Substance Live's model for a way to collect subscriptions without making it shitty for customers or potential customers.

https://www.allegorithmic.com/products/substance-live/monthl...

The major software packages in architecture/design (Autodesk + Adobe) that have gone subscription only come across as greedy money grabs, where the incremental yearly upgrades are no longer worth paying for, so they've just pulled out the licensing and force you to buy it anyway.

Allegorithmic's model is more fair to customers in that if new releases don't add anything worth paying for, they're not obligated to pay for it. And it keeps the lowered barrier to entry where anybody can pick it up for a month at an affordable price.

Best of both worlds, IMO. Unless the plan is to squeeze people monthly without having to make product improvements.

This is an interesting model. How do updates work for someone renting-to-own (presumably receiving updates) vs. someone who purchased outright?

Hm, I don't see any mention of it, but renting to own is probably the safer bet for making sure you get upgrades.

In the event you finished renting-to-own and a major release comes out, let's say Substance Designer 6, you get cheap one-time upgrade fees (IIRC $75 for SD vs the $150 new purchase). Looks like they don't allow for monthly payments on upgrades, but there's no reason JetBrains couldn't.

Missed the edit window, but I should point out that the "cheap" upgrade price there is on an Indie license. The Pro license or upgrade is a fair bit more.

But like I mentioned, if you feel like a release isn't worth it, you're free to skip it.

i dont even consider recommending people to adobe anymore, i tell them to get acorn.

I have an old Photoshop CS5.5 license in case of emergencies, though it's Windows only. On the Mac side I've been using Pixelmator.

HDR and panorama merging are native in Lightroom now, so I don't have to use an external editor regularly anymore. I'm honestly surprised some bureaucrat at Adobe didn't stop them from adding those because they're competing with Photoshop rentals.

As an added benefit, Lightroom merges into DNG files that keep all the data. Back when I had to merge stuff in Photoshop it flattens down to a TIFF and you can lose information out of the highlights and shadows.

Well this is both good and bad news. I'd really like it if they kept an option for the old pricing model available. I'm not a fan of subscribing to software updates. I'd prefer to have the ability to keep using an older version if a newer one changes in ways I don't like.

On the other hand, it would help for me since I tend to program in several different languages, and purchasing a new license for every one isn't something I really like doing.

We have over 10 licenses and I think they lost us as a customer with this move. They should have tried to maintain a dual track for a few years.

Really?

You realize you can get all of their products for a little more than a dollar a day, right? Personally, I can't think of a better way to spend my money than to buy something that I use every day that will easily pay for itself in a month's time.

Feel free to use this XKCD chart to figure out if it's worth the money given your people's hourly rate: https://xkcd.com/1205/

Like cable, one channel you view, 99 crap channels you never watch.

Its only a deal if you actualy need those other tools.....

It's $0.60 cents a day. It's still a deal if you only use one thing and they offer 2 million things you absolutely know you'll never use.

I don't know what your hourly rate is, but if you were only making $10 an hour, this tool would pay for itself if it saved you 4 minutes a day. That's 1% of your time in a normal work day for someone not even making a living wage.

We use the IDE only for Java so the bundled pricing has no appeal for us. We have delineated development roles with no fullstack developers per se.

What're you gonna switch to? Depending on the product, there aren't a whole lot of good alternatives.

Eclipse. That's where we came from. We'll keep current perpetual licenses without updates for those who are welded to Idea, but for new hires it's going to be Eclipse.

i think this is a bad step, i would prefer to just buy my licenses outright. My employer compensates me for such purposes, having to invoice them once a month would be annoying. i have never really liked the idea that they upgrade about once a year and want more of my money, so i skip every other version... in my case, this monthly billing will cost me more money. ;(

I agree that this is a terrible idea for the typical end user. For your specific case though I'm pretty sure you can purchase one year of service all at once, so it would still be possible to only invoice once a year.

Don't forget to add the cost of SSD and/or memory when using any Jetbrains' IDE.

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