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How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

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Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#391

Post by mgkimsal »

nilliams wrote: post #379
balabaster wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving to a subscription model for 1 thing is okay, perhaps 2, or even 3. But with every company gradually moving to subscription models, it is emptying out our wallets every month and removing more and more of our income to maintain the status quo. From my own perspective, and I know this doesn't apply to all, but I cannot imagine I'm the only person with this viewpoint, I'm sick of other developers saying things li…

So would you rather pay a one-off fee for a JetBrains product and have no maintenance and support for it? And by that I mean not even access to their public forums and for their devs to stop posting on Stack Overflow. Because that's the reality for most one-off purchase products. You'll get minimal over-the-phone customer support if you're lucky. Not sure why you see it as a product that doesn't fit a subscription mo…

They had a model where I got some support for X months (12?) for the cost of the license. When that license ended, I got no more support, but the software kept working. If I don't need the support, and am happy with the version I have, why do I need to keep paying in perpetuity for new features and service I'll never use?

I'm fine if they want to introduce new licensing options, but pulling the old perpetual license model bothers me. Raise the perpetual price if you want to guide more people to monthly/annual, but let me keep a perpetual license that doesn't stop working when I quit paying.

The problem with JB not accommodating the sentiment isn't just "Jetbrains will lose out" - many current and future users will too.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#393

Post by andrewstuart »

balabaster wrote: post #357
andrewstuart wrote: post #346

What an incredible whinge and whine. Why are people so resentful about paying money for their incredibly useful primarily development tool? Often while I'm using PyCharm I'm awed by how powerful it is and amazed that JetBrains has the resources, time, brainpower and money to write it. And that's not worth a few bucks? Sheesh. Seriously, it's a trivial amount of money and if you or your company can't afford it then yo…

Moving to a subscription model for 1 thing is okay, perhaps 2, or even 3. But with every company gradually moving to subscription models, it is emptying out our wallets every month and removing more and more of our income to maintain the status quo. From my own perspective, and I know this doesn't apply to all, but I cannot imagine I'm the only person with this viewpoint, I'm sick of other developers saying things li…

The business plan that you or your company wrote probably includes "Pricing plan: subscription, revenue bazillions!"

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#394

Post by johnhappener »

balabaster wrote: post #365
moron4hire wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't like it, take your ball and go home.

Mature

You're the immature one. They're offering you a deal. If the terms of that deal work for you then take it or if they don't then leave it.

"At what point will people turn around and say "Enough's enough! My money is mine!""

This is such a weird thing to say in this context. Who do you think is arguing the contrary of this? Nobody is. Nobody is taking your money or assuming it is theirs. They are making a business offer to you. They can choose the terms they want to offer. You can choose those that you want to accept. If they overlap a deal can be done. Nobody's money is being taken.

It's like I want you to mow my lawn. You're not interested in doing that, but I'm going to make angry posts saying that your business must mow my lawn because I want a lawn mowing service.

They don't want to do business your way. Get over it. It's not your decision. Take it or leave it.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#395

Post by balabaster »

kileywm wrote: post #380
pasbesoin wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be you would stop getting updates but could still use the product at its frozen (for you) point. For example, to re-examine an old project (even if you might not want to do any fresh builds on an outdated platform). Can you still do that, or does the tool "die" for you altogether once you stop paying? P.S. Assuming underlying OS compatibility, which would probably eventually break unless e.g. also frozen i…

After 30 days of a failed payment [1] or 30 days without contacting JetBrains servers [2] it will only allow you to open their software briefly before "the product will gently notify the user and will allow some time to connect to the Internet before asking to close the application". [1] https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/204344871-Does... [2] https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/204348441-What...

In other words the software requires perpetual rent to keep working [even as is]... that's not cool at all.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#396

Post by nogridbag »

s73v3r wrote: post #369
sangnoir wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, under the new regime, the moment he stops paying, the IDE stops working. Previously, when you stop paying,you'd be left with a working-but-outdated version. This is definitely a downgrade

Do you have anything that says that's specifically what happens? Cause their FAQ says that when your subscription expires, you can continue using the last version that was released when your sub expired.

Where did you read that? The closest I could find was "Does the new model demand that I have Internet access?" [1] in which it states that it requires an internet connection every 30 days to authenticate and if it cannot then it will close the application. I'm guessing that also means if it does auth but sees an expired license, it would also close the application.

[1] https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/204344871-Does...

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#397

Post by prodmerc »

WorldWideWayne wrote: post #371
andrewstuart wrote: post #346

What an incredible whinge and whine. Why are people so resentful about paying money for their incredibly useful primarily development tool? Often while I'm using PyCharm I'm awed by how powerful it is and amazed that JetBrains has the resources, time, brainpower and money to write it. And that's not worth a few bucks? Sheesh. Seriously, it's a trivial amount of money and if you or your company can't afford it then yo…

> What an incredible whinge and whine. What a bullshit way to start your own complaint. There is absolutely nothing wrong with people complaining about this. > Why are people so resentful about paying money for their incredibly useful primarily development tool? It's not about the money, it's about the principle. Poor people rent things. That's how they stay poor. How would you feel if you woke up one morning and cou…

> It's not about the money, it's about the principle. Poor people rent things. That's how they stay poor. How would you feel if you woke up one morning and couldn't go buy some eggs from the supermarket until you joined their club for 100$ a month? You'd go to another supermarket. What if you couldn't buy a car, only lease one?

Wow, you've just explained so well why I feel uneasy about all this switching to subscription payments for locally install-able software.

I mean, there isn't that much change, and it's even cheaper upfront, but... there's something about it. Not being able to own the stuff you're using every day (and depend on) is that it. It just kinda feels that you're owned instead.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#398

Post by monksy »

sireat wrote: post #223
jacquesm wrote: post #213

I would like to encourage everybody that does not like the new licensing scheme of JetBrains to band together and produce either an open source product that is as polished so it can be used for free or, alternatively to take this apparently huge business opportunity and run with it. I never quite understood what makes people that make 100's of thousands of dollars per year so cheap that they would balk at paying a fe…

Many people are quite happy to pay for their tools, what they do not want is to be forced into a situation when it is pay for the tools this month or lose access to them. Jetbrains could have avoided all this negative backslash by keeping the current licencing scheme in place and adding the subscription service as an option. Again, think of it like buying a DVD over renting it on Netflix, most likely Netflix would be…

> Jetbrains could have avoided all this negative backslash by keeping the current licencing scheme in place and adding the subscription service as an option.

Thats what Visual Paradigm did with their Visual UML product.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#399

Post by whaaaaaaat »

WorldWideWayne wrote: post #371
andrewstuart wrote: post #346

What an incredible whinge and whine. Why are people so resentful about paying money for their incredibly useful primarily development tool? Often while I'm using PyCharm I'm awed by how powerful it is and amazed that JetBrains has the resources, time, brainpower and money to write it. And that's not worth a few bucks? Sheesh. Seriously, it's a trivial amount of money and if you or your company can't afford it then yo…

> What an incredible whinge and whine. What a bullshit way to start your own complaint. There is absolutely nothing wrong with people complaining about this. > Why are people so resentful about paying money for their incredibly useful primarily development tool? It's not about the money, it's about the principle. Poor people rent things. That's how they stay poor. How would you feel if you woke up one morning and cou…

> How would you feel if you woke up one morning and couldn't go buy some eggs from the supermarket until you joined their club for 100$ a month?

Sounds like the local co-op; turns out they sell better products and generally provide a better shopping experience...

>But if people disagree with the pricing model and it drives away customers

If you change a pricing model (and it's not cheaper) you'll get a ton of complaints no matter what you do. Their model will work fine.

Re: How JetBrains Lost Years of Customer Loyalty in Just a Few Hours

#400

Post by bluecalm »

chiph wrote: post #355
kedean wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the complaint is that, because you choose not to regularly renew the software, you don't get the discount that comes with it? That sounds kind of entitled, honestly.

It goes against decades of tradition. In the past, the upgrade was offered at a discount to reward your customers for staying with you. It also reflected the lower acquisition cost for that release -- since you didn't have to spend any marketing dollars to find them. Their policy was saying "We appreciate your loyalty, but only for the next year then you'll have to go back to paying full price." But the year didn't s…

I made sense if you think about paying for updates in terms of paying for their work. If you wait 3 months and then get 12 months license for updates you effectively got 15 months for a price of 12. They may be hesitant to offer that to you on a discounted price. I think it makes perfect sense.
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