Final update on the JetBrains Toolbox announcement | Hacker News Reader

Final update on the JetBrains Toolbox announcement

blog.jetbrains.com

73 pointslol76814 comments

From TFA

"You will receive a perpetual fallback license once you pay for a year up front or 12 consecutive months."

This is good news - they've listened to their customers and alleviated the key concern - losing access.

But only for the version that was at the start of that 12 month period. You have to roll back if there were newer releases in that time.

Yeah, I didn't realise that at the time. Makes it a bit shittier, feels graceless and petty.

Like others, my only issue is that if you pay for 12 months and then decide not to continue that you should get a perpetual license for the latest version your subscription allowed you, not the first version. Maybe that was the intent but it doesn't read that way.

Otherwise I am good with the rest of it at this point.

I think it's a good compromise. It's like if you were to buy the product (full price or 12 payments plan) then you get the product that was released on the day you bought it. I assume the "version" they're talking about is major releases, so you'd still be getting patches for that version.

I see your point, but I think mine is that traditionally if you buy a software license it comes with 12 months (or some time) of updates (minor ver) and upgrades (major ver). I personally don't have any issue with the subscription, its just that if I decide to stop renewing, I should get a perpetual license to the latest version my subscription allowed me access to, not a prior version that I am not even likely using at that point.

This truly may be jetbrains intent, but it isn't worded that way as I read it.

This seems like a decent compromise, though I'd have preferred it if the version available on the fallback perpetual license was the one that was available on the last day of the subscription rather than the first - since now (if I'm understanding correctly), the model forces you onto a fixed old version of the software if you stop payment. I guess it's better than not having access to the IDE at all though.

Also, this might simply be a coincidence - but it is Friday afternoon. I know I've read some PR-related articles advising the release of bad news on a Friday..

The previous announcement was also a Friday afternoon.

This is a much better announcement, both from a perspective of the improvements provided and how it was messaged. The first one made it sound like the whole point of this was to be easier for the consumer. Obviously, the consumers didn't take to it, given that it switches things up significantly for people who are happy with the current system. With this latest post, they're a lot more upfront with the fact that this decision is driven by better alignment with the economics of their business. That's not the pill many people want to swallow, but at least it's honest and logical.

Now I'm ok with this, all they needed to add was the perpetual fallback.

The previous announcement about turning into a subscription based IDE pushed me into trying Netbeans again.

Netbeans is suprisingly close in features to IDEA and better in some places (in my experience XML handling and performance). This new announcement is probably not enough to get me to switch back despite some Netbeans annoyances.

I am happy with this. The fallback to the version as of starting date is fine.

If I am not using open source software then a subscription seems right in order to get updates as they are ready, not for new release marketing considerations.

Edit: Jet brains played a dangerous game with the previous announcement. I beefed up my emacs setup, experimented with Atom, and liked the free versions of PyCharm and IntelliJ.

The two years for the price of one got me back.

As one of the people who was pretty frustrated with the original plan, I can live with this. Thanks for listening and incorporating our feedback.

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