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Comment by jrs235 | Hacker News Reader

This isn't even Software-as-a-Service. Most companies that offer SaaS are HOSTING the software and thus incurring ongoing monthly costs. The Service part is that the purchaser doesn't have to install the software on their own machines, pay for nor update servers, etc. Selling rights to use [but not own] software on a monthly basis should be called RtpS - Rent-to-pwned-Software (cause you're pwned, you'll never own it)

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JetBrains produces a continuous stream of improvements to all of their tools, previously they would have to artificially hold some of the bigger changes back to justify the next big yearly version number increase. With subscriptions, this is no longer necessary, everyone can have the latest and greatest right away.

And I do hope the next logical step is to offer an optional fully hosted service that has feature parity with something like WebStorm. There's cloud IDEs out there, but they're lacking when compared to JetBrain's tools.

"previously they would have to artificially hold some of the bigger changes back to justify the next big yearly version number increase"

I get that. Perhaps they should or could have just sold the current latest version as is for a bit less and then whenever the next big release comes out offer a prorated upgrade amount to those that feel the new features are worth the additional upgrade amount. Their model, withholding features so they could package them into a huge update, was hurting themselves and their customers.

What's to say they don't start pulling IntelliJ with other/more products? That is, to stop or slow down development/improvements and now milk a cash cow?

Clarification: They could have sold a working perpetual license without the 1 year of upgrades. When they have an upgrade they have an prorated upgrade path/cost based on when you purchased your current license/product.

Yeah, but the "right" way to do it is to disable updates on license expiration, not just turn off a product you might have paid for since 2010.

Maybe the best thing to do would be an initial payment worth, say, 6 months, followed by monthly renewals; if the renewal does not go through, updates stop. This would be closer to the current model, but would still switch most revenue (renewals) to the SaaS model.

I'm happy enough to pay a subscription for intellij since the price seems about the same (oh actually they're putting it up by £20 or £30 per year after the first year). I'd rather get frequent updates, but since I've already bought it outright twice (upgrading when I feel I need to) it seems a bit lame to just pull the plug should you ever take a break.

Agree

Some of the comments propose granting a perpetual license after 1 year of subscription. I would go for that.

I want to agree but the problem with that on this is that it can be gamed by buying one month, using that until a feature entices you, and then buying another month.

Which can be anti-gamed by charging $50 for new installs then $10/mo for each consecutive monthly renewal

At least you'll have paid for 6 months right away; and if you lapse, when you go to renew you pay for another 6 months upfront.

If you're going to all this trouble just to skimp £100 per year on your main development tool you're probably the type of customer who will simply not buy into a SaaS model anyway, so there is no point in chasing your pennies.

You could unofficially make the "skimping" into the reduced price option, removing the current "personal" licenses and removing complexity. Cheap "Personals" will pay a 6-months fee once a year or less, losing updates, and "Companies" will happily pay full whack (because they value predictability and opex vs capex) for the full monty. Win-win, and nobody gets hurt in the feelings.

Some SaaS "hostings" are paper-thin, like Adobe or Steam. They are glorified FTP sites.

Ha, yes. As a daily user of Creative Suite, the 'cloud' benefits are fairly feeble.

The file hosting is handy, but we already use Dropbox and Google Drive. The other features seem like they could have been incorporated into the desktop apps but were pulled into the cloud to make it appear more worthwhile.

I can see how moving shrink-wrap software to a subscription can be good for the company – reliable income streams, no longer having to worry about headline features to get people to buy the next version – but (especially in Adobe's case) it's hard to see it as anything but a cynical attempt to milk customers for every last drop before the whole thing crumbles.

Former Adobe evangelist here. In my opinion, what you said about headline features is the crux of the matter. Under the subscription model engineering's only job is to make the user happy, so they can focus on performance or stability when needed, but when you sell a new box each year their main job is to make sales happy, with new demoable features. The result is always bloat.

Whereas the "cynical attempt to milk money out of customers" angle is, IMO, not nearly as relevant as people expect. I mean, everything a for-profit company does is an attempt to milk money out of customers in some sense, so when Adobe (or JetBrains) sold shrink-wrapped boxes I assume they set the prices at whatever their models showed was the maximum people would pay, and presumably they chose the subscription prices the same way. I expect it's much of a muchness.

As for the SaaS stuff (storage, etc), I just see that as little extras that become possible once each install is tied to a user account, so the company tries them out to see if they work. But it's not like they're supposed to be so amazing that they justify the switch. (views my own, not those of my former employer, etc.)

> so when Adobe (or JetBrains) sold shrink-wrapped boxes

... they didn't have this wonderful option of bashing customers on their virtual heads and break their products if customers forgot to pay rent. It just wasn't an option, when it all started. Now it is, and here we are. The internet sometimes is just bad for people.

I don't follow, if JetBrains wants to rent software how is it the internet's fault? If the fact that the internet provides an enforcement mechanism is the issue, I'm sure cracked copies will get around that...

> before the whole thing crumbles.

Are there any alternatives to adobe on the horizon? I'm asking because I'd like to know. All I know of is affinity designer and pixelmator.

Sketch is an alternative to Photoshop and Fireworks for UI design.

The field is wide open at the moment. It's an interesting time - there hasn't been so many options in a while.

For Photoshop alternatives there's Pixelmator, Acorn and Affinity Photo.

For Illustrator there's Sketch, iDraw and Affinity Designer.

All we need now is a good InDesign alternative.

I'm with you on Adobe, but Steam is a whole different thing, even leaving out its OS aspirations. Probably most importantly, it's free -- I think of it as an unusually heavy e-commerce site that needed me to install a bunch of stuff to get it to work. Kind of like if Netflix let me watch stuff offline, but only if I put their Chrome app on my computer: It's a client for accessing their platform.

Steam isn't really SaaS as much as a platform. It supports eCommerce, the logistics of delivering product on a massive scale (even if said product is bits instead of boxes), and some social networking on top of that.

Steam cloud save (play on the living room, continue in the bedroom), friends (with game integration like invites), anti-cheat, automatic update, video driver updates, in home streaming, fps in game overlay. Definitely not a site.

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