Slashdot Mirror
JetBrains Moving Its Dev Tools To Subscription Model
esarjeant writes: For many Java developers, IntelliJ has been our predominant IDE. JetBrains is looking to make their tools easier easier to buy and use by switching to a subscription program. Their plan is to have people pay a monthly/yearly fee for access to the tools instead of upgrading when they're ready. Fortunately, if your subscription lapses it looks like you'll have 30 days to check all your stuff in. How does NetBeans look now?
Many members of various developer communities are pushing back against this change: "For a developer with an unstable income, it might be perfectly fine to stay on an older version of the software until they've stashed enough cash to afford the upgrade. That will no longer work." JetBrains has acknowledged the feedback, and say they will act on it.
This is just another example of greedy, rent-seeking behavior, trying to force users to pony up cash on a monthly basis forever and ever and ever...heaven forbid you ever get to actually own anything ever again.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
This news just made me act on that thought - proactive unsubscribing.
>Paying for an IDE
If you really need the proprietary add-on bits then do what YOU'RE PAYED TO DO and build them yourself.
https://github.com/JetBrains/i...
It's YOU that chooses to give JetBrains, not them.
There are enough free IDEs only a small cadre of true blowhards will pay rent for an IDE, even if Eclipse sucks donkey shit.
I have used it once on a contract and was not impressed with its functionality. There wasn't much difference from other IDEs and most of them are free.
Hmmm, pay for something or use a free one?
Something similar to the TiVo pricing model could be needed I think - so you could buy-out your subscription at the current product level (ie. IntelliJ v14 for example).... otherwise, just leave an option to buy the whole version. As a hobbiest developer at home, I like using IntelliJ but can't really justify paying something for it every year. Maybe when I start to need some JDK 8 features, I might begin to consider v14 or v15 depending on what's available.
Of course, there are benefits to a subscription model, you might want to get a developer team a Toolbox subscription to everything - assuming your teams can use a lot of these products. On an annual basis, as your group/needs grows or shrinks you can adjust licensing as necessary.
... I'd feel a bit better about it, if they actually fixed some of the long-standing rough edges, like the completely-broken built-in compiler behaviour (something that Eclipse, despite being free and generally Old and Busted), and severe lag even on powerful machines, seeing as they're now asking for more money for the same product.
They promised this years ago, and it still hasn't happened. If I'm paying (and now, paying continuously), I'd expect them to lift their game.
Want my money? Give me software that works better than the free alternative.
It's been nice working with ya.
Just to be clear, "stashing enough cash for to afford the upgrade" means setting aside $100 for the year.
If you have to "stash cash" to afford the upgrade chances are you should save your money; you can get by with Eclipse. I don't approve of the new pricing model, but the "I can no longer afford to be a developer" argument doesn't work. The new model is actually cheaper per year for anyone who always renews their license.
Personally, I prefer to purchase something and be done with it. If I want the upgrade I can purchase that outright as well. If I don't then I think I should be able to continue using what I have already paid for.
in early 2000s. They had an invoicing package designed for print shops. The software was very popular. Apparently just about every print shop in America used it. The software was easy to use, install and maintain. It never broke and didn't need updates The company that made it is tits up. After they were done selling it to all the print shops out there there just wasn't anything left for them, and there weren't enough new print shops to sell to (what with the chains like FedEx/Kinkos muscling in).
Yeah, it's rent seeking, but I don't really see an alternative for a company that makes utility software. It's damned hard to get people to pay for it...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I've been using Netbeans since version 3.6 and am quite pleased with how it works, even in the recently released 8.1 beta. I've tried JetBrains and it seems fine enough for what you pay for (except the maven support feels very clunky and not very seamless, IMHO.) But feature comparison vs. price paid? Netbeans wins, hands down. I've tried Eclipse many times over the years also, but come to the same conclusion: I still don't personally like using Eclipse. Therefore I keep going back to Netbeans because it has 90% of what I need and there's plugins for the other missing 5%. The rest? I have a command line and I'm not afraid to use it. You can use whatever tool(s) you like, but I've been coding in Java professionally since 2000 and you can uninstall my copy of Netbeans when you pry my harddrive from my cold, dead hands.
This is a huge negative for me. As well as being a Java developer I am a photographer who uses Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom in my work. I HAVE NOT UPGRADED EITHER SINCE ADOBE MOVED TO THE SUBSCRIPTION MODEL. If I have a tool that I use for my work I want to own it. I don't ever want to lose access to that tool for any reason. If I have a project built in Idea and 10 years from now the world has moved on, Idea is no longer the tool of choice, and my "subscription" is lapsed because it's not used any more; I still want to be able to go back and open up my 10 year old project with my 10 year old copy of Idea. If I can't do that I need to find another tool to do all of my Java work in. A subscription model introduces a potential for digital bit rot that is unacceptable for professional software. I will never allow myself to depend on such a tool for my work.
There's an easy solution to this problem - just offer both pricing models and let the consumer choose.
E.g. you can buy a perpetual license to a specific version of Intellij for $X, or you can buy the subscription model for $Y / year (which is not tied to a specific version). At that point, its the consumer's choice.
I feel like people have knee jerked a bit much of this. I like the idea of owning my version of Intellij (have been using it since 2002'ish), but I tend to avoid buying every single version (I typically upgrade every-other release, to save a bit of $).
There are a lot of software companies moving to a subscription model. Adobe is one of the larger companies that has moved to a subscription model with their Creative Cloud. For business-to-business software, it makes sense to have a subscription model. The company has a predictable software expense on its budget, and it doesn't have to guess when it will need to pony up money for the next upgrade. Right now, I'm having issues getting my employer to pay for an upgrade of some software. It wasn't in the budget, so I have to demonstrate the need for the upgrade. If the software was on a subscription, I wouldn't be having this conversation. Just switching the model to subscription would save tens of man-hours wasted on arguing over whether the upgrade is needed. In fact, the time wasted with the back and forth among ten or so individuals probably exceeds the amount of money the upgrade costs.
But for an individual developer who is paying for the software out of their own pocket, a subscription isn't that attractive. As many posters have noted, an individual will only upgrade when there are features in the new version that warrant an upgrade. If the current version works, then great, keep using it. The individual can make the cost/benefit choice themselves.
Personally, I have an individual developer license to several of JetBrain's products. And I hope they keep the individual developer license as an option, because that is the best choice for an independent developer.
I'm self-employed and the price of IntelliJ is the equivalent of about 30 minutes of my time. I write algorithms for several companies, in multiple languages, and have been quite happy with IntelliJ. Your mileage may vary...
That said, perhaps Eclipse would do everything I need, but there is a cost of changing - I'd be spending some time scanning websites to figure out how to do what I want to do.
A.
If you luck into a niche it's easy to well for a while. Being a competent programmer doesn't mean the money never stops. And making a useful product doesn't matter if you can't get users to pay for it. I'm not defending rent seeking, I'm just saying I don't think utility software companies can survive without it. You can't just keep cranking out new software. It take a lot of time and resources to get a new product off the ground and it's easy for it to flop.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I think they are really feeling the pressure from Microsoft integrating more and more features in Visual Studio that used to be resharper only. I use resharper at work and also pay for a private license, and I think it's pretty good.
But...
I fucking hate the subscription model.
Maybe it's time to try coderush or something.
You can still buy a license that doesn't expire. It looks like once again, TFS is a steaming pile of dog shit in terms of quality and accuracy.
Sure you have to modify your .vmrc for syntax highlighting but...its free.
Who's laughing now? Google dropped Eclipse for Android. This thing is a subscription. And I'm still using emacs. I've seen IDEs come and go most people probably don't even remember existed.
As a long time user of IntelliJ IDEA (13 years) I see no problem switching to monthly subscription. It's not much, just 12 EUR / month or 20 EUR / month to get all tools. For me and my company, this really is a no-brainer. For example if I have a project that has 5 person team, it's only 100 EUR / month for the whole team. I would say this is almost free.
YOU ARE NOT PURCHASING.
At most you get a license for 30 day trial... with a 30 day extension. Don't pay? You have nothing.
Reddit is like a lightning rod. They get all the crazies and lunatics jumping on the latest hysteria. Then when the matter is ready for polite, sophisticated discussion, it appears on Slashdot. In the past it was digg, now it's reddit. Same old same old.
lucm, indeed.
Anyway, I am genuinely interested in which features/properties for any of the above-mentioned languages are lacking in Eclipse and make it worth switching to another IDE for that language.
Here's the Eclipse Experience.
1) Go to their website.
2) Click on download.
3) Spend the next 20 minutes trying to understand which of the 14 editions you need *
4) Give up and download Netbeans.
* bonus round: click on one of the edition then look at the "Detailed features list", and be amazed to see... a list of java namespaces. Very convenient.
lucm, indeed.
I'm black and sound black, and their racist support refuses to help.
It's a Czech company. Out there the non-Caucasian population is 0.5%, and most of that is Vietnamese.
So the problem is not that they are racist, it's just that when you say "cuz, this shit is whack and if y'all don't make it supafly I'm'a smoke yo dog" they probably don't understand the issue.
lucm, indeed.
No. The people I talked to there that are hateful all sound Indian. Communication problems isn't a bad guess on your part, but that wasn't the problem.
And sexist! When my boss called them they refused to help her. When I called, as a male-ish sounding female, they were helpful.
I didn't find them to be racists. They were instead sexist. They refused to help any of the women on our team. Not only did they refuse, they were extremely rude about it. IntelliJ is simply too slow to use, and we were looking for help on what features we could disable so we could attempt to use it. Instead, we gave-up on IntelliJ and just counted the huge amount of money we gave JetBrains as a loss. It was a complete waste of money.
I purchased the last version of IntelliJ Idea and would upgrade if I see significant incentives in the product to do so. At the moment they seem to be throwing a lot of effort into releasing new products rather than working on existing products.
I can see an advantage for someone who wants the entire suite of products as long as new products are constantly added but not so much for someone who just wants Idea. With a subscription they have no incentive to make a product better as they have you hooked into using that product, if you want to keep using it you need to keep up the subscription.
Personally I can see myself going in other directions for what I want to do now that this has come in.
For example, Adobe Premiere 2015, which is part of Adobe Creaative Cloud, is pretty much broken as it exists today. If you want it functional, you have to roll back to the 2014 version.
Subscription services suck because they already have your money, so they're in no hurry to fix their broken product. They'll get around to it eventually. Maybe.
Otherwise, a stand alone edition suffering the same problem would be critical fix numero uno or they don't get to sell any.
Another company going the same route is Autodesk. Both Maya and Max are going subscription only starting next year. Max will run about $1500 / year. I have no idea what Maya will cost. Doesn't matter, I'm switching to Blender because I'm not going to pay a subscription to be a permanent beta tester.
It would be one thing if updates were Earth shattering and can't live without sort of things, but the reality is usually something far less impressive. Mostly bug fixes that should have been dealt with during beta. :|
Besides, no one updates to a new version of anything mid-project.
I guess they'll figure that out a few years from now when most of their user base has left and they go the way of Silicon Graphics.
I'm done with companies switching to subscription models based on the sole needs of increasing their monthly revenue.
It's the next logical move.
Why is Snark Required?
Yeah, really bad....b4, we had a choice of when we would upgrade, if it's worth it, was there enough innvovation, etc. now, 'you' are forced to keep paying for upgrades, even if you don't need them right away, or want to just skip one. Sucks really bad...As a longtime user 10+years, I'm out...ransom does not play well with me.
When they go for this, it's bye bye new resharper.. I hate all these subscription models of late..
Any SaaS model has only one purpose: make more money for the vendor over time and get rid of customers who do not buy. Typically, SaaS costs the customer more after two to three years, plus, and that is the complaint here, they either pay up or lose the software. Traditional licenses allow for running the application indefinitely. There are a few tricks for overcoming subscription model restrictions, such as backdating a VM or cutting a VM off the Internet once the license got applied and confirmed. That is eliminated by providing SaaS exclusively as a cloud service. The great thing for vendors is that they will get recurring revenue without having to deliver much value in return. There are no obligations as to when updates are pushed out and what scope of changes and additions they include. Even better, keep core functionality only as wide as necessary to make the initial sale, then sell upgrade packages and make a big PR deal out of it "We listen to customers and offer more customization options!" In fact, all that happens is that folks have to pay more and keep paying. The only option is to hit these vendors where it hurts,,,means stop buying their product.
Holy shit, you actually posted that offensive drivel?
I think you need to recalibrate your offend-o-meter.
lucm, indeed.
Is anyone else here using this combination?
I am a longtime Java programmer that has been using Netbeans since 3.x. Recently I have started doing Python projects and found the Python plug-in support for Netbeans 8.x very rudimentary. So I tried PyCharm and found it does what I want and ended up paying the $99 for the personal-pro edition. There are a number of things I don't like about PyCharm and it has a lot of rough edges for a paid-for product but I haven't found anything better yet.
When Netbeans Python support comes up to speed I am not sure what I will do. I am open to suggestion if anyone has one but I suspect I will end up dropping PyCharm for Netbeans.