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Comment by digitalblade | Hacker News Reader

From my point of view the "jetbrains" licence model is one of the best:

- You can purchase their software with a single annual fee or 12 monthly fees

- If you purchase with an annual fee you can use the last updated purchased version forever. Also, if you pay for 12 month continuously you have the same advantages

- If you purchase the same software for 2 sequential years you will receive an automatic discount and at the end of the third year you will obtain a fixed discounted price (if I remember correctly around 20% forever)

Also they have a lot of bundles but this is valid only if you have a lot of software that are not necessarily usefull for all users but that can be usefull for some specific categories of useres.

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I think the only caveat here is it only works for software which is mostly offline. If you software is highly dependent on Cloud services then maintaining backwards compatibility for the people who have stopped paying and use old versions quickly becomes costly. But I guess if your software is dependent on Cloud services than it is more of a service.

I think jetbrains really got it right. Everyone I know has been giving jetbrains money forever, and I don't think I've ever heard a complaint about their pricing or business model.

The switch to the current pricing model was anything but smooth. The uproar was so bad they had to come back with a revised plan. A lot of people were still upset with the revised plan after it launched.

Not my site, but this blog entry explains what happened: http://muppetgate.github.io/the-jetbrains-subscription-blood...

In they end they listened to their customers. I use clion regularly for personal work. It's not eggregiously expensive and new features are always comming in so I feel like I get my money's worth and it's not cost prohibative.

Hint: deliphi, take note

I don't like limiting anyone to older versions. As the OP said, it's difficult to maintain. You'd have to be aware of every bugfix and improvement so that when they want a feature or bugfix, you know to direct them to the latest version. It's easier if everyone's on the latest version or at least can update if they feel that might solve their problem.

It might be a way to satisfy both people who want a perpetual license and to get recurring revenue and pay for future development, but it's kind of arbitrary to make the distinction at version numbers instead of features or easily-identified packages of features.

> I don't like limiting anyone to older versions. As the OP said, it's difficult to maintain.

You don’t maintain it, if you need a bug fix or new feature you have to upgrade to the newest perpetual license. IMO this is a much better model than the subscription model.

> it's kind of arbitrary to make the distinction at version numbers instead of features or easily-identified packages of features.

That is literally what version numbers are made to represent

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