Subscription
I just received an email informing me that I will be forced into a subscription in November. I do not appreciate this at all. I paid for a perpetual license in February 2015, which guaranteed me updates for a calendar year, which means until February of 2016. I have it in writing from you. Now, in November of 2015, I will have to pay again FOR THE SAME SOFTWARE I JUST PAID FOR. You have broken your agreement with me.
Your perpetual license terms are unwelcome. I would have felt much better had I the opportunity to own the version of the software available at the time my subscription LAPSED, and not the version available at the BEGINNING of the subscription period. I don’t know how subscriptions in your part of the world work, but in the US, if I pay for a year’s subscription to a magazine, I get to keep all the issues produced during that year, NOT JUST THE FIRST ISSUE. As it stands now, you’re asking me to fund your next year’s development without any measurable return on my part. Distasteful and unacceptable.
Unfortunately for you, you have turned a loyal customer, one who has recommended you to many colleagues, into one who is seeking alternatives to JetBrains products. I will now turn my colleagues away from your company, and I will not hesitate to discontinue using your products once I have replaced them.
Kevin Morgan
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Hi Kevin,
That's actually not the case. You do not have to pay anything November 2015.
You purchased the license in February 2015 and you're entitled to all upgrades from now till February 2016. After that date, you can keep the license and all the upgrades you received till then. The subscription model that comes into effect on November 2nd provides you the option to switch to it if you like, but no one is forcing you to do so on any date. If you switch before January 1st 2017, you will receive certain 'existing customer' benefits.
Regarding the new subscription model, we undetstand you might not agree with it, but as per the blog post, we've moved to this model, away from purchase+upgrade. The fallback license is to address concerns some customers had. For existing users, they get 2nd year free if they wish to switch at some point.
Thanks.
> You do not have to pay anything November 2015.
Thank you for clarifying this point. The rest of my post still stands, however. The terms of your perpetual license are unacceptable, and I can no longer in good conscience recommend your products.
But all the significant features introduced during that second year become unavailable at the end of that year unless you subscribe for a third year, because the fallback is always to the featureset at the BEGINNING of your last year, right? And if my project have become dependant on features introduced in the past year, and for some reason I cannot renew my subscription, then I may have to rework them just so that they work with the fallback feature set.
Have I got that right?
Frank.
That is correct yes. If you do not renew your subscription, you fall back to the exact version available at the time your 12 month subscription started.
I'd really like to make it clear that the move here is to subscriptions. It's not purchase + upgrade, and that is why prices have also been adjusted accordingly, so entry cost is lower and renewal rates get discounts after 2nd (20%) and 3rd (40%) year and onwards.
The 'free' second year is really not helpful. During that time you unwittingly become accustomed to new features which you lose at the end of the 2nd year at the time of the fallback. This causes disruption in workflow if you are not able to cough up the cash at this time.
What is needed is a clearly documented and prominently displayed mechanism to invoke the fallback license at the end of the first year.so that I can lock my version at that point (plus get bug fixes at the active version at the time of expiration at x.y.* as promised in the adverts for the new license scheme)