How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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/

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Yearly subscription pricing seems OK to me, with some allowance for giving companies adequate notice to re-subscribe.

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.

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?"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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?

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.)

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.

    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)

For the terms of that upgrade: https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/204249752-What...

> 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.

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.

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

Font Line Height (thank you Atom for supporting this) 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 . 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.

http://vsrefactoringessentials.com

https://github.com/code-cracker/code-cracker

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.

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.

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.

Personally, Webstorm is exceptional and worth every penny.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Loyalty is as good as the product; if another product comes along and makes my life easier i would switch.

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

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

This, not so much. Officially looking for alternatives.

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

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.

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.

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

payingCustomers--

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.

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).

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.