JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs • Hacker News Board

Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#121

Post by crustycoder » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 12:00 PM UTC

Gleaned from various tickets on the JetBrains bug tracker:

You can't uninstall it, you can only disable it. That's because it's a built in plugin, those can't be disabled without breaking incremental upgrades (which personally I don't use anyway).

And like many others here, my corp explicitly forbids ANY use of ANY 3rd party LLM technologies at work. It's a disciplinary matter. So JB forcing something on people that means they could potentially lose their jobs for using IntelliJ is just monumentally stupid.

There is a workaround which is to manually delete the plugin, see https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/LLM-1760/Can-not-remove... But as above, that breaks incremental upgrades.

Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#122

Post by echelon » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 2:40 PM UTC

mistrial9 wrote: post #70

echelon wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a cynical take. JetBrains knows what's best for its business. It knows that Microsoft presents a clear and present danger to extincting them and all of their hard work. LLMs have a huge role in the future of engineering, whether or not you like it. They present massive productivity boosts. I'm a senior Rust engineer and I've seen my development time nearly cut in half after using LLMs. And we're just getting…

drama is one part of life, yes

Such an unnecessary one. Save it for film and stage.

Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#123

Post by insanitybit » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 4:55 PM UTC

nottorp wrote: post #118

insanitybit wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Is your question "how can you trust jetbrains?" or something? I don't understand. Disable disables a plugin. If you're saying "but only if you trust jetbrains" yes, you are running their code on your computer... If your model is "I don't trust this software" the plugin is irrelevant.

> Disable disables a plugin. And uninstall uninstalls it. Except in this case when the plugin automatically reinstalls, according to TFA. And we're talking about something that sends your code to their servers. Malice, incompetence... still not good.

> And we're talking about something that sends your code to their servers.

For the millionth time - not if you do not activate the plugin.

Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#124

Post by kcartlidge » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 5:06 PM UTC

For background, I have no skin in this game. I use JetBrains IDEs and have the AI plugin disabled, but only because I haven't found it to be helpful.

The issue is simple, though. By making the presence of the plugin mandatory, regardless of its enabled/disabled/active/inactive status, the IDE falls foul of corporate rules against the installation of AI at many organisations.

It doesn't matter how easy it is to deactivate; if an InfoSec rule states no AI software then the whole IDE becomes untouchable.

The response that the installation is mandatory because it is a bundled plugin is both irrelevant and a choice by JetBrains. As long as the AI plugin is installed the IDE is forbidden by those corporate rules. There's no leeway, no persuasion possible, and no mitigations that will satisfy. It really is black and white.

Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#125

Post by 5d59232e-b392 » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 9:27 PM UTC

insanitybit wrote: post #123

nottorp wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Disable disables a plugin. And uninstall uninstalls it. Except in this case when the plugin automatically reinstalls, according to TFA. And we're talking about something that sends your code to their servers. Malice, incompetence... still not good.

> And we're talking about something that sends your code to their servers. For the millionth time - not if you do not activate the plugin .

[flagged]

Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#126

Post by 5d59232e-b392 » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 9:43 PM UTC

genmud wrote: post #109

joshstrange wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimate is $101/yr (year 3+). I can think of very few things that provide even a fraction of the value at that low of a cost. And no, I don't see VSCode as equivalent to IDEA Ultimate, not in the slightest. Maybe with many, many hours of config I could get it close but even then VSCode plugins are so painful to manage and configure (and make sure they don't step on each other's feet).

I had the all products pack, so I guess it wasn't just ultimate. Between 2019 and 2022 it went from $89 to $149 + tax, so 160/year. I did not receive a 67% increase in value during that time. I used to have the same view about idea vs vscode, but the MS provided plugins are solid these days and some of the other ones that are community are equally rock solid. Things where IntelliJ used to just beat the crap out of co…

It's very easy to fact check, just use the web archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20180602022113/http://www.jetbra.... All products pack was $149 + tax in 2018, now it's $173 + tax, so only 16% increase. Probably it's even cheaper now if adjusted for inflation. And $89 was the cost of only IntelliJ Ultimate.

Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#127

Post by kieto » Wed, Dec 20, 2023, 10:12 PM UTC

TIL:

"Additionally any project that has a .noai file automatically is excluded from using the AI Assistant even if you have opted in and have an active subscription to the service."

Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#128

Post by nottorp » Thu, Dec 21, 2023, 8:56 AM UTC

insanitybit wrote: post #123

nottorp wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Disable disables a plugin. And uninstall uninstalls it. Except in this case when the plugin automatically reinstalls, according to TFA. And we're talking about something that sends your code to their servers. Malice, incompetence... still not good.

> And we're talking about something that sends your code to their servers. For the millionth time - not if you do not activate the plugin .

> For the millionth time - not if you do not activate the plugin.

For the millionth time - uninstall was supposed to uninstall too :)

Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#129

Post by RunSet » Thu, Dec 21, 2023, 5:43 PM UTC

insanitybit wrote: post #112

RunSet wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JetBrains's EULA has long been a blank check in terms of sharing information with third parties. Glad to see some light falling in that vicinity.

The "light" in this case being a UI bug that everyone on HN has completely misunderstood because the average HN user can't read?

> the average HN user can't read?

Let's put it to the test.

https://www.jetbrains.com/legal/docs/privacy/third-parties/

Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#130

Post by 5d59232e-b392 » Thu, Dec 21, 2023, 8:59 PM UTC

RunSet wrote: post #129

insanitybit wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "light" in this case being a UI bug that everyone on HN has completely misunderstood because the average HN user can't read?

> the average HN user can't read? Let's put it to the test. https://www.jetbrains.com/legal/docs/privacy/third-parties/

Ok they host some services on AWS and GCP, use Zendesk for support tickets, you can log in to JB using a GitHub account, and they use Google Analytics and a 3rd party payment system for billing. What exactly is the problem?