I get it. Fuck subscription based licences.
But I remember that you could keep the last version you subscribed to after subscription ended, which is way better (and the way Adobe products used to work).
Am I wrong? Or did they change that?
this post was submitted on 12 May 2024
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Jet brains does still let you keep the last used version when you unsubscribe
I thought they let you use the version you used when you started subscribing, not then you ended the subscription? This was something a lot of people were upset about. That if you subscribe for a year and stop, you end up with a year old version.
https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What-is-a-perpetual-fallback-license
You're both half right.
You get the version at the time of your subscription (plus bugfixes). Then every time a version has been out for 12 months while you've been paying you get that version perpetually (plus bugfixes).
So it's 1.0 when you subscribe, you get that perpetually.
It's 1.0.1 in your third month, you get that perpetually.
It's 1.1 in your fifth month. You get that perpetually after 17 months.
It's 1.2 in your eighth month. You get that perpetually after 20 months.
You unsubscibe at 19 months but retain a perpetual version licence.
- You started with 1.0
- You ended with 1.2
- You have to roll back from 1.2 to 1.1
Previous version was incorrect. This is why I just distribute our licenses, not procure them!
If paying on a monthly basis, as soon as you pay for 12 consecutive months, you will receive this perpetual fallback license providing you with access to the exact product version for when your 12 consecutive months subscription started. You will receive perpetual fallback licenses for every version you’ve paid 12 consecutive months for.
So, in your example, you unsubscribe in month 15. This means, you paid 14 months so you get to retain the version from month three (which is 12 full paid months to 14). This means a downgrade to 1.0.x and not to 1.2.x
Sorry, yes. I'll ammend
I'm glad they picked something simple and obvious 😌
Thank you, good explanation. I can see why people get confused since the outcome depends on the subscription length then.
Oh, I don't know which way around it is then actually. I've not subscribed before, but a colleague does so it's possible I've misheard or misinterpreted what he said
Dunno, I've never touched an Adobe subscription because I've heard they're like getting out of gym memberships to quit. 😬
Really difficult indeed, subscribed to the student sub a while ago, was cheap compared to normal prices for the whole suite. However getting out of the deal was forcing me to pay up the rest of the yearly subscription price, yo could get around this by downgrading the subscription to photoshop only and then it would let you cancel without any additional payments. Such a shitty dark pattern to do but it’s Adobe so it’s expected 🤷
And on top of that, latest versions of their tools are always free until the next release ( which is every 2-3 months ).
Their words when i talked to them on some convention.
Subscriptions are bad as hell, but jetbrains is doing them alright imo
also core product is open source
So real answer time on subs from the Adobe side. Albeit not popular.
The real reason for subscription based licencing is push updates based on new tech with Adobe. Back in the day you had to wait for a new version of Premiere/Photoshop etc to support new camera codecs or new features like background proxy generation. This had to do with what's considered a new software package and software patent law with how you pay devs.
So you pay for features ABC for version 10. And pay for features ABCDE in version 11. But it you're paying a subscription service they can "live" update the produt to rollout ABCDEFGH constantly as they're ready to ship.
Yeah it's basically Adobe being cheap and not wanting to pay their devs better and for that I definitely agree fuck sub models. But for us professionals live updates in post is a godsend and also allowed our camera and production tech to upgrade at breakneck speeds.
At the end of the day Adobe is the best choice because the alternatives are mostly not software dev and UI focused. And they are on top of their game tech wise. So we're pretty much at their mercy on how they wanna charge us. I'm always excited to see what BMD is doing with DaVinci Resolve - the best pro color grading software out there btw. They've been pushing their NLE editing package of the software hard and is free, highly recommend. Would love to see them overtake Adobe like Adobe overtook Avid.
At the end of the day Adobe is the best choice because the alternatives are mostly not software dev and UI focused.
They're probably also the only professional game in town because they patent every single UX enhancement. And with IP laws favouring no one but the biggest cheese, they cripple their competition by calling dibs on sensible UX ideas.
The base version of IntelliJ is FOSS, and they kinda offer perpetual licenses for their paid applications. If you subscribe for an entire year, you get a perpetual fallback license. It's just a license for an older version of the software, but you get to keep it forever. https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What-is-a-perpetual-fallback-license
The base version of IntelliJ is FOSS, and they kinda offer perpetual licenses for their paid applications. If you subscribe for an entire year, you get a perpetual fallback license. It's just a license for an older version of the software, but you get to keep it forever. https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What-is-a-perpetual-fallback-license
You know that any software that requires a login or can update on its own can be bricked at a moment's notice if someone in legal or accounting changes their mind about the whole "perpetual" thing.
It doesn't auto update and you don't need to login. You can enter your key directly.
Does it require internet at any point to activate/check the key? If so it's the same with extra steps.
There's a dialog within the program to enter your key though I haven't checked if it connects to the internet at that point. I use an account so I can easily use it on several computers.
This is true, but compared to the prevailing alternative I'll take it. Unless there's a viable FOSS alternative for whatever software we're talking about at the time, of course. :P
Join us now and share the software, you'll be free hackers, you'll be free~🎵🎵🎵
I think what people like is that IntelliJ and PyCharm have FOSS community editions.
And that I can just create new trial accounts every month.
Other people's password be like
JetBrains032024
JetBrains042025
Jetbrains052024
...
My JetBrains accounts be like
JetBrains032024@example.com
JetBrains042024@example.com
JetBrains052024@example.com
...
What I like is that the products are good and that the company doesn't engage in shitty exploitative business practices
donate to your nearest open source project instead
And don't move to Berlin.
??
It is a reference to an antifa Sticker that I see often where I live. The original text is: Support your local antifa and don't move to Berlin.
Its just shit.
ich fands eig ganz cool gab auch morgentheater unterwegs wenn sich mal wieder die obdachlosen beim bahnhof geprügelt haben =)
IntelliJ at least has a good open source version and it's free for students
Open source? Sure?
Absolutely. Plus if you run a open source project they will give you the whole suite for FREE.
IntelliJ is great for organizational settings. I would never use it for home use as there are many good free alternatives for that kind of setting.
Most Adobe tools don’t have any good free alternatives even for home use.
So jetbrains is “acceptable” because I don’t need to open my own wallet.
Most Adobe tools don’t have any good free alternatives even for home use.
inkscape is on a level with illustrator (maybe even better)
for drawing: try krita
if you want to pay money (much much less than for adobe): Affinity is on a level with fotoshop
Unfortunately Affinity just got brought out by Canva https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/press/newsroom/canva-statement/
Of course they are claiming oh no we won't be going subscription only, but if history is to be believed, give it a year or two and see that stance change.
Sheesh, FOSS licenses really are the only force in the universe that can stop this nonsense.
I remember shelling out for Substance indie licenses thinking it would be a good investment. Shortly after they're:
- part of the "adobe family" (yaaay! /s)
- Not gonna make it subscription only, c'mon guys. It's ok.
- No seriously, we hear you, you'll have options! Definitely!
- Newsletter: Ok we're subscription only, "Get your keys for the super out of date version because we're just deleting it from human history now."
- SaaS cloud only and you're gonna like it, peasant.
Never trusting private software like that ever again.
Another upside of Jetbrains over Adobe is that you can get edu-licenses that allow you to use every software of theirs.
The best deal our university could get from Adobe was 25% off on Photoshop if at least 200 students bought it.
They also offer their software for free for open source projects.
Yeah, they are super pro FOSS. TBH no one makes a better IDE than them for professional settings. I wish Adobe did things the way they do them.
I would never use anything else for Java or Kotlin. Through the free and open source JetBrains IDE of course.
I personally love Webstorm and Dataspell
Most Adobe tools don’t have any good free alternatives even for home use.
Yep. Lightroom is the one piece of software I tolerate paying a subscription for. Alternatives do exist, but they all suffer from the typical FOSS problem of never having had a designer look at them and help them build UI that's meant to be used by humans.
I've spent a bunch of time trying to learn Darktable, and at the end I still couldn't arrive to the same results I could in Lightroom by watching a 5 minutes tutorial and adjusting a few sliders. Not to mention that searching for a few of the issues I had led me to a bunch of threads of people complaining about the exact same issues only to be met by a developer telling them "if you don't like the UI use another tool".
Laughs in perpetual fallback version punctuated with a hearty community edition.
Only use TeamCity professionally but the licence model is transparent and a doddle. No bloated loaders, wanky arbitrary rule or ridiculous gotchas, and the software is yours to keep (minus support) thereafter. They even recently released CVE mitigation patches for 2016 versions recently. I didn't resent paying them money at all.
BS comparison