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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

#81

Post by stoshe »

mikeash wrote: post #66

What bugs me about this is when I asked them about the change on Twitter and they kept trying to blow smoke up my butt about how it's better for everyone. Their first response was that it's cheaper than before. Except it's not. Did they think I wouldn't actually go look at the prices? Then they said it's better because you can jump in and out at will. Only need Product X for a month? Only pay for a month. Which is fi…

A typical move to subscription based pricing LOWERS costs to the consumer, but the company gets the benefit of more predictable recurring revenues. That makes the pricing JetBrains puts out a little bit of a head-scratcher.

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

#82

Post by piqufoh »

corin_ wrote: post #73
chiph wrote: post #26

I think JetBrains miscalculated just how much people like the current licensing model. I liked their first model - I paid for it and just used it. The current model, with the yearly upgrade premium, I tolerated. I felt it was a scam (are they going to publish an update in the next year so I get my money's worth? Probably not) but I could deal with it. This new model doesn't work for me at all. As someone who bought h…

> * I felt it was a scam (are they going to publish an update in the next year so I get my money's worth? Probably not) but I could deal with it.* Surely under the current model you can just not pay for another year until they release an update you want access to?

.. but then you lose the 'renew' discount and have to cough up full price when the update eventually arrives.

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

#83

Post by kryptiskt »

oneJob wrote: post #17

It's my personal opinion that one only gets complaining rights if one doesn't use Gmail, one doesn't subscribe to NetFlix, one doesn't use Spotify, ad nauseum. JetBrains is making a business decision. That's what businesses do. Their current Community Edition is open-source. Anyone is free to pick up where they left off. That is an enormous contribution they've already made to the community. You make your consumer de…

They should be happy that the customers are complaining, it gives them a chance to consider their concerns. I just usually walk away without warning if I'm unhappy with a product, customers like me force businesses to do a lot of detective work to find out the reasons for bad retention.

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

#84

Post by calcifer »

corin_ wrote: post #73
chiph wrote: post #26

I think JetBrains miscalculated just how much people like the current licensing model. I liked their first model - I paid for it and just used it. The current model, with the yearly upgrade premium, I tolerated. I felt it was a scam (are they going to publish an update in the next year so I get my money's worth? Probably not) but I could deal with it. This new model doesn't work for me at all. As someone who bought h…

> * I felt it was a scam (are they going to publish an update in the next year so I get my money's worth? Probably not) but I could deal with it.* Surely under the current model you can just not pay for another year until they release an update you want access to?

No you can't. Under the new model if you stop paying, it stops working.

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

#85

Post by softawre »

chrislgrigg wrote: post #69

For companies managing the licenses for their employees, this is a great change. It's especially true for those who have a few primary languages but occasionally get contracts or have projects in other languages. For those with staff sizes in flux -- employees coming and going, contractors in and out, interns on board for part of the year -- only being responsible for the number of seats actively in use is extremely…

You can do this already though. Right now, my team has a license server URI they type into their editor, and when we're using the software it grabs a license slot from the server. If that employee left the company they just wouldn't use the license anymore and there's no cleanup work.

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

#86

Post by fastball »

microtonal wrote: post #30
oneJob wrote: post #17

It's my personal opinion that one only gets complaining rights if one doesn't use Gmail, one doesn't subscribe to NetFlix, one doesn't use Spotify, ad nauseum. JetBrains is making a business decision. That's what businesses do. Their current Community Edition is open-source. Anyone is free to pick up where they left off. That is an enormous contribution they've already made to the community. You make your consumer de…

It's my personal opinion that one only gets complaining rights if one doesn't use Gmail, one doesn't subscribe to NetFlix, one doesn't use Spotify, ad nauseum. That does not make sense. Spotify et al. were like that from the beginning. You know what kind of deal you are getting. JetBrains is changing the rules of the game completely, with very little heads-up time, for people who might be deeply invested in their pro…

How exactly do you think more "heads-up time" would improve the situation? Either you are gonna stick with JetBrains and their product, in which case heads-up is irrelevant, or you are gonna switch to a competing product, in which case heads-up wouldn't help either: you will still need to learn the new product, regardless of when you switch.

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

#88

Post by amyjess »

LoneWolf wrote: post #44
amyjess wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everybody is using their IDEs And I think that's a shame, because I prefer NetBeans over IntelliJ. I've used both, and IntelliJ's Maven integration is just terrible.

Please elaborate, I havent used Netbeans for a while but it really sucked compared even to eclipse. Also never had any problems with maven integration on IntelliJ.

IntelliJ likes to maintain two build systems. It has its own project files that keep track of dependencies and how to build things. Changes made to the POM have to be imported into IntelliJ's project format, if you build or run something in IntelliJ, it's not necessarily the same build Maven would perform, because IntelliJ is invoking java and javac itself without going through mvn.

NetBeans, on the other hand, uses the POM itself as its project file for everything it can. All dependency information exists only in the POM, and NetBeans reads it directly. What little bit NetBeans needs that doesn't go in the POM goes in nbactions.xml (e.g. main class, path to JVM), which is very small and minimal, and there's no duplication of data between the two. The NetBeans project file is just the tuple of (pom.xml, nbactions.xml). I've encountered many instances where IntelliJ and Maven get their dependency trees desynced, and while sometimes it can be solved by re-importing the POM, other times it can't, and resolving it becomes this huge hairy nightmare.

Better yet, whenever you initiate a build or run anything in NetBeans using a Maven project, it simply invokes mvn through a shell. You can see in the output tab the exact Maven command line NetBeans ran, so you can duplicate it or send it as instructions to collaborators who don't necessarily use NetBeans.

I have to use IntelliJ at my current job, and I find myself just using it as an editor and building by manually invoking Maven on the command line myself (and the company has our own system of scripts for running our Java projects).

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

#89

Post by LoneWolf »

thisisandyok wrote: post #63

They've posted a response on their blog: "We announced a new subscription licensing model and JetBrains Toolbox yesterday. We want you to rest assured that we are listening. Your comments, questions and concerns are not falling on deaf ears. We will act on this feedback." http://blog.jetbrains.com/blog/2015/09/04/we-are-listening/

I really hope they do act, I love their products but this new subscription model annoys me.

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

#90

Post by mikeash »

fastball wrote: post #77
mikeash wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay for Spotify. I don't like JetBrains' decision. Walk me through why this removes my right to complain. I don't get it. I don't like JetBrains' decision because using their software represents a large investment in time and effort to learn it and get set up to use it. That investment could then be destroyed at any time if they go out of business, or if they decide in a few years that their prices need to be 500x…

1. If they "go out of business" you will save money with the new model, because instead of paying for a year of the license in advance, you are paying by month. 2. Nothing in their old model prevented them from raising prices. Not sure how you think switching to a monthly subscription model changes that. i.e. your entire premise, that this is an investment of time and money, really has nothing to do with JetBrains' s…

I think you're missing the fact that with the old model your purchase keeps working forever, you just don't get updates. With the new model, your purchase stops working when the subscription runs out.

If they went out of business or raised prices in the old model, I could keep using the version I purchased for as long as I wanted. With the new model, my software turns into a pumpkin and my choice is either to keep paying whatever they want to charge, or switch to something else.

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