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

Rent seeking behavior

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

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.

Re:Rent seeking behavior

[Anonymous Coward]

This is really quite simple.

The people paying for the upgrades consider the changes improvements. The people who don't pay, don't.

Now you can understand why so many people were on Office 2003 for so long.

Re:Rent seeking behavior

[Anonymous Coward]

Just put the price up then, virtualy everybody has said so, people just dont want to pay a subscription.

Re:Rent seeking behavior

[DivineKnight]

Pity, IntelliJ was on my list of considerations. Now I am rethinking that prospect.

Re: Rent seeking behavior

[Anonymous Coward]

People do pay for improvements. You come out with an improved product and I'll buy it--if I want to.

These rent seekers want you to pay whether there are improvements or not, and this may come as a shocl, but some people don't like that.

Re:Rent seeking behavior

[Culture20]

And why a lot of others shifted to OpenOffice and LibreOffice. No ribbon was the selling feature; no cost was icing.

Re:Rent seeking behavior

[Billly Gates]

Outside of slashdot I have not met anyone yet who has ever complained about the ribbon in many years.

It took me a week to end the frustation and get the hang of things. A month later I was proficient and prefer it and the change previews over the hiddeous nested menus of 2003 any day. Now I curse and pull my hair out when I got to 2003 workstation

Want to see something cool? Hit the alt key in office? If you are on a laptop with limited space like a starbucks or airplane you do not need a mouse. Just hit the alt key and it will show you which shortcut will open each ribbon. I got hooked as I prefer to use Window key and type without a mouse and now this on a laptop and find it very Unix like

Re:Rent seeking behavior

[GNious]

I got used to the ribbon in a matter of days, but having quite literally NO other software using it, it still means that switching to MS Office applications requires a larger mental "context switch" than switching between pretty much any other 2 applications.

Never been a fan

[rholtzjr]

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?

Re:Not going to work out for them

[Z00L00K]

If you think Eclipse is bad you haven't seen bad.

As a paying user..

[benjfowler]

... 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.

Re:As a paying user..

[davester666]

They are claiming that with this new model, they won't have the constant pressure to come up with fancy new features each year to make you re-up your support agreement, so they will actually work on fixing bugs and releasing features that have fewer bugs as they are completed.

Somehow, I doubt it, as the subscription model removes any real impetus to advance the application, just to make sure it keeps running with minimal improvements.

Re:As a paying user..

[jma05]

> and the clusterfuck that was Eclipse

I never got this rage against Eclipse. Its a FOSS product. For a FOSS product, it provides a level of polish that goes well beyond the standards of a typical FOSS. It is one of the most complex projects out there. The standard distributions of Eclipse work quite well, out-of-the-box. Now, it has a very large ecosystem of complex plugins - at a level that is unmatched by other IDEs. Like with Firefox, some of these plugins do bog down Eclipse. But that's hardly the fault of Eclipse. I only seem to have problems with Eclipse when I keep one install and load all my plugins into it. When I separate it out (one for functional languages, one for dynamic ones, one for Java etc) to multiple, logical installs (it is a portable distro)... no problems. P2 provisioning (helps create multiple runtime profiles from the same plugin install base) worked quite well (haven't used it recently), but it is not promoted for some reason.

I don't use Visual Studio these days. I tried Python Tools a while ago though. It is funny watching MS reps talk as if it was they who brought code-completion to the unwashed Python masses. I was using code completion with Python in 2001. On Windows, I tended to use PyScripter - very light, but no IPython integration like Spyder.

For me, PyDev worked quite fine (I prefer Spyder myself). I tried PyCharm; it was nice; but surprisingly heavy. I generally dislike IntelliJ and Netbeans based IDEs on Linux because of the fonts. They are more tolerable elsewhere.

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:I worked for a print shop

[ZorinLynx]

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.

Re:I worked for a print shop

[swb]

I've found that the smaller the niche market, the smaller the developer, down to the point where some niches it's like a guy who used to work in that line of business who wrote some software for it where none existed and found it more lucrative to sell it than to stay in the business.

There's always the chance "the guy" was in his 40s when the ball started rolling, he had near zero overhead and made enough where he could retire early. Thus, no need to come out with a new product or make the dialog boxes rounder or whatever passes for innovation. He's 59, living with his wife in a condo in Florida and spends his days fishing and living comfortably without having to work anymore. Not family dynasty rich, but retirement home paid for and enough investment capital to live off forever.

In doing SMB consulting, I've run across a couple of applications like this where the software was written by some guy and one day they call up with a question or somethng and the phone number is now disconnected. In one case, it wasn't a big deal because the application did like one market-specific thing and it worked fine. In another, it was a problem because the application had some kind of home-rolled DRM and needed him to generate a new keyfile if it was installed on a new computer.

Netbeans is looking just fine

[brendan.robert]

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.

Re:Not going to work out for them

[fnj]

If you think Eclipse is bad you haven't seen bad.

And what if you DON'T think Eclipse is bad? What if you consider it to be pretty wonderful? Hmmm?

I can live with this...

[bunyip]

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.

Re: I can live with this...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're doing pretty well if you earn $398 per hour.

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.

Re:Hello Bitrot

[dgatwood]

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.

It's harder than you think

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:It's harder than you think

[davester666]

So instead you deserve to make money forever on the one product? That's just as fucked up as copyright, where both you AND your children simply must be paid for a work. Otherwise, there's no point in creating it.

Re:Put down the pitchforks people...

[Anonymous Coward]

Only until November 1st, after which they will no longer sell perpetual licenses. If you want the latest and greatest, you must subscribe.

BTW, nice job knowing what you're talking about before ripping into TFS.

Re:Not going to work out for them

[jma05]

> 3. It's not user friendly.
> A very well supported statement.

I for one would like all my Desktop apps to have an Eclipse style UI. Its very flexible to layout, as you see fit. I first tried Eclipse in 2002. I picked it up instantly and had no confusion about anything (had used several other Java IDEs before).

> 4. It doesn't run on other operating systems well because it wasn't pure swing.
> 'Other' operating systems?
> AFAIK, it generally runs fine on Linux (barring high-DPI KDE environments) and OSX.

Indeed. I prefer Eclipse on Linux in part because it is NOT "pure swing". Swing fonts on Linux are not nice. I wish that no IDEs are Swing-based.

Re:Not going to work out for them

[frank_adrian314159]

That you have a pretty low bar for "wonderful"?