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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...
... 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.
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.
I find it hard to believe a software company with the talent to make software so robust and well written that it never needs updates couldn't come up with another blockbuster product to continue making money.
Also, if the product never requires updates, wouldn't that mean that if you're paying a subscription fee you're basically flushing money down the toilet? The money's not being used to fund new versions of the software, you're just paying the developer for something you already own for eternity.
You know that Lightroom is still available for sale, right?
When Adobe announced the "Creative Cloud" nonsense, I bought a copy of CS6, upgrading from CS3, knowing that if I didn't act, I would never be able to do so again. At that point, I immediately began phasing out my use of Photoshop. Unfortunately, I haven't created any big new projects since then, and I'm stuck using Photoshop for existing projects because Pixelmator doesn't handle manual text kerning changes correctly on import. But the cover art for my fourth novel will be done entirely in Pixelmator.
You see, Photoshop hasn't added anything I really care about since they added layers and layer effects. There are a few minor enhancements that are nice to have, but I was happy on Photoshop 7. I buy upgrades to Photoshop whenever an OS X upgrade breaks it badly enough. It annoyed me badly enough paying for bug fixes when I was doing it on my own terms. When Adobe tried to push me to a monthly fee schedule for Photoshop, I walked away and haven't looked back.
I still buy Lightroom about every second release (about $40 annually), because unlike Photoshop, its upgrades actually provide tangible benefits—new camera support, face recognition, etc. (Yeah, theoretically Photoshop upgrades technically add new camera support, too, but I've imported RAW files into Photoshop a total of three or four times ever; typically, I start out with the processed output from Lightroom.) The problem with Photoshop is that it is a mature product, and there aren't any cool new features left to add that provide enough benefit to pony up an extra $80 a year to get them.
That's a serious problem for companies like Adobe. You see, they're in a position where they command the market. The only place to go from there is down, and the writing is on the wall. Flash is a failure. Photoshop is rapidly seeing the bottom portion of its market worn away by competition. This leaves Adobe's last remaining market—big graphics shops. Those folks will keep buying Photoshop until they no longer find themselves exchanging Photoshop files with other companies. Adobe is thus bleeding those companies for every possible penny they can before Photoshop eventually fades into obsolescence. Or at least that's what it looks like from where I'm standing.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
You're doing pretty well if you earn $398 per hour.