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.

Comments

Re:Rent seeking behavior

[Anonymous Coward]

Heaven forbid people pay for the continuing improvements that are being made to the software.

Good point, Weak argument

[mtinsley]

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.

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.

I worked for a print shop

[rsilvergun]

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...

Re:Not going to work out for them

[dinfinity]

The hate for Eclipse is so terribly outdated.

I haven't heard anyone come up with one single proper argument against Eclipse that stands today. Any dev worth his salt has an SSD, plenty of memory and a half-decent CPU. In addition to that, Eclipse has come a long way, which make the "It's slow as hell!"-thing quite outdated.

Even if it would be marginally worse than other IDEs, it has some great advantages:
1. Multi-language, hell, multi-purpose even.
2. Cross-platform
3. Free
4. Open source
5. Designed to be extended with plugins and as such, a veritable buttload of them exist.
6. Generally consistent interface

I've used it (professionally) for editing and debugging PHP, Twig, HTML, XML, YAML, CSS, Android, Java, C, Shell scripts and Javascript code residing in CVS, SVN, Git repos (and even via FTP - shudder) in the past decade and in general being able to use the same hotkeys and UI elements to perform similar tasks. I will readily admit that the different languages have varying levels of support for the more advanced features, but on the whole it easily beats other multi-language tools and saves me from having to use and become proficient in the use of a multitude of language specific editors.

It's probably not the best example, but due to the lack of plugins for Objective C in Eclipse I've been forced to use XCode for iOS development: Talking about donkey shit..

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.

Put down the pitchforks people...

[MikeRT]

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.