BTW I should add - I think this is an excellent move. Hopefully Jetbrains can combine the best of open source and the closed model - lots of willing hands to help fix bugs, but still controlled and with a consistent philosophy. Congratulations!
I think that would open it up to too many people. Plus, app server support isn't much good to you without Javascript, JavaEE, HTML support. Once you add all that you're not really excluding much.
A key market/demographic the community will be great for is students. Students only need the functionality included in the community edition, at least early in their academic careers. Then when they move on, they can upgrade to the Ultimate edition via an academic license.And finally upon graduation buy a personal license.
And besides, JetBrians can always offer more features later in the community edition if the initial results of the program warrant it.
Don't get me wrong - I'm sincerely appreciative. My point is that the primary reason for the Community Edition (according to the website) is to expose IDEA to more developers. I guess they only want new Java developers... Just doesn't make much business sense to me.
OMG Wow. Jetbrains is going to let the unwashed open source masses get their grubby hands on the immaculate IntelliJ codebase that's been refactored a million times into unparalleled brilliance. I'm not sure to be excited or worried.
I don't like the division of features between Community vs Ultimate editions. I think it would be better to have Community vs Professional editions.
Alot of the features tossed in the Ultimate edition are for new and emerging technologies, e.g. languages/platforms android, and ruby, and technologies like grails, rails, gwt, etc.
IMO, all of those should be in the community edition, because Jetbrains should be trying to capture the mindshare in those emergent areas. It makes no sense to restrict those in an "Ultimate" edition. By definition, emerging technologies are not ready for mainstream professional use, so I don't see why Jetbrains doesn't add support for these first in Community edition, and then deliver professional features on top of that at a later date. Jetbrains has a great reputation for quality cutting edge software, and I believe they can deliver support for these emerging technologies faster and better than the open source mob, and could attract users. Although, I wouldn't break my back trying to support *all* emerging technologies. Jetbrains needs to focus on those technologies which have greatest potential to see mainstream use in professional software engineering.
So, I would include some minimum support for all languages like SQL, XML, HTML, XSL,XPath, Ruby, Groovy, etc. and all Frameworks and Technologies like JSP, Hibernate, Grails, Rails, etc. A new user should be able to download IntelliJ and load source code for any language using any technology and have their socks wowed off!
Instead of "Ultimate" edition, I would have a "Professional" edition which builds on the basic support with features used by professional software developers,e.g.
* Code coverage * Source Level JSP debugging * Commerical source code control integration [VCS integration is a big hook for commercial software developers. I could not use IntelliJ if it didn't have support for Perforce, no matter how good it was..] * Commercial AppServer Integration [WebLogic, WebSphere]
IntelliJ's library of inspections with quickfixes is very valuable and Eclipse/Netbeans is still nowhere close to IntelliJ in this area. Automated code analysis and repair is a professional feature, and should not be undervalued. MyEclipse doesn't place much value on that because they aren't doing much in that area. Maybe Analyze->Inspect Code should only be in professional edition, or maybe the inspections labeled as "(Avaiable only in Analyze->Inspect Code)" should only be in professional edition. Another example, Maia new feature "Dataflow to this" and "Dataflow from this" could be in professional version only. I would like to see more work in automated code anaylsis and repair, e.g. Code->QuickFix/Cleanup Code feature I talked about a couple years ago http://youtrack.jetbrains.net/issue/IDEADEV-17781
VCS integration is also a professional software engineering feature. This might be controversial, but I'm wondering if even CVS, SVN, Git integration should be restricted to the professional edition? Or you could have an edition between Community and Professional.
My key point is that Jetbrains should not hold back on any features required for people to do basic editing, navigation, and refactoring of your code, no matter the language or technology. But features beyond that like integration with VCS or AppServers, automated code anlysis and repair, etc. could all be restricted to a pay version. I think Jetbrains marketing is caught up playing technology bingo with myeclipse, e.g. "XML", "SQL", "JSP", "Flex", "CSS" => "BINGO"!!!!! You can beat myeclipse at their own game by offering support for all languages and technologies by default, with profesional features restricted to a pay version. If you hold back the new / emerging languages in an "Ultimate" version, IntelliJ won't compare as well to myeclipse.
There are other features which I think make more sense in Professional Edition, but I don't know how they can be enforced if the code is open sources,e.g. Community only allow one project to be opened at a time.
I hope Jetbrains is successful with this change in strategy. -Alex
Please note that the Community Edition does NOT include a feature that shows you an "Unsupported project type" message box and shuts down as soon as you open a project that uses Spring or Hibernate. So, of course, all the features for basic editing, navigation and refactoring are available for projects with any technology. Moreover, the Community Edition fully supports XML - and that includes code completion of Java class names in framework configuration files, navigation from those to the actual Java code, and support for the Rename refactoring. So we are not holding back on anything essential in this regard.
On the other hand, it doesn't make much business sense for us to release everything we have for free.
I guess we could spend the next year dividing each of the features we have into "non-professional" and "professional" parts, and then announcing that the Community Edition includes "basic" support for Flex, PHP, Android etc. and the Ultimate edition includes "advanced" support for all of those, but that would be really, really hard and confusing for everyone.
I'm not sure whether I should be happy with this step or not. We also need to develop plain web-applications on tomcat, so we can't use the free version. But being honest, ~130€ each year for the update is very cheap, so I never complain(ed) about the price. Unfortunately, now our advantage of using the best tool and not the cheapest is melting.
That's a brilliant idea... BUT, i think that removing commercial VCS plugins from the community edition is a bad decision IMHO. I wanted to make IntelliJ available to all members of my team and make them learn and love it. I wanted to show my management that TeamCity would be the next step to improve the quality of the software we produce... I was so disappointed to see that...
I also have an ambivalent feeling about the step of creating an Open-Source-Edition. I've been a paying customer for quite some time and I'll probably upgrade my personal license regardless of the community-edition, since I do a lot of work on web applications and that area is not covered by the community edition. I am a big fan of IDEA and I really enjoy working with this tool - I think it is great that more people will get to know IDEA and its quality.
However, I'm not sure wether users that come from Netbeans or Eclipse will be convinced by the community edition to buy into a commercial or personal license because a lot of the things these free IDEs can do are missing from the community edition. So I expect these users to give IDEA a try but not to buy the ultimate edition - I would expect that these users will switch back to whatever IDE they are used to. For example the fact that I can do a simple "Rename"-Refactoring and see this refactoring reflected not only in Java-Code but also in my spring-xml-files, my JSP codes etc. or the ability to refactor CSS-Classes and have those changes updated on all HTML fragments is really great. But as far as I understand the community edition, those things will not work there since there is not support for HTML/CSS,Javascript and Spring. I still think that IDEA is superior in nearly every aspect concerning code related work but I would think that potential customers will get a much better impression by using a full featured trial version rather than a feature-limited but free community edition.
On the other hand, it will be difficult to convince others to pay for a product when you seem to get the same product for free. I've been lobbying my company for quite some time to buy corporate/commercial licenses for the in-house development team and I finally convinced them that we should buy a couple of licenses when Maia is finally released. Guess what ? After the German IT-News-Website heise.de reported on the open source edition, I immediately got an email that we should probably wait and not buy the licenses right now. Now I have to argue why we need the "ultimate edition" and why the free edition is not sufficient. Granted, there are a lot of arguments for the ultimate edition, but in my opinion it is easier to say "IDEA does cost money compared to other IDEs but it is way superior and good quality does have its price" than "Of course there is also a free edition of IDEA but we do need the commercial license since that edition does have feature x/y/z".
And one last remark: I hate the name "Ultimate Edition" - it does remind me of the VISTA-Version-madness. I think "IDEA Basic" and "IDEA Professional" would be a better naming scheme - but anyway, it is too late for this criticism ;-)
And one last remark: I hate the name "Ultimate Edition" - it does remind me of the VISTA-Version-madness.
I agree on this point, too, especially because on Vista the Ultimate edition was one which contains features normal professionals did not need and hence did not use that edition.
but anyway, it is too late for this criticism ;)
I don't think so, because IIRC IDEA 9 is not yet released and hence no Ultimate edition sold.
I assume users will still be able to get a 30-day trial of the full version.
I think the best thing about opening up the platform is that it will greatly ease plugin development, and will allow others to release specialised IDEs for other languages. This alone should greatly improve the IDEA ecosystem. That and the fact that people might have some chance of fixing their pet bugs is huge. I hope that Jetbrains can dedicate more support resource to people who want to help fix bugs than they did previously to plugin development, that would help a lot.
On the other hand, it will be difficult to convince others to pay for a product when you seem to get the same product for free. I've been lobbying my company for quite some time to buy corporate/commercial licenses for the in-house development team and I finally convinced them that we should buy a couple of licenses when Maia is finally released. Guess what ? After the German IT-News-Website heise.de reported on the open source edition, I immediately got an email that we should probably wait and not buy the licenses right now. Now I have to argue why we need the "ultimate edition" and why the free edition is not sufficient. Granted, there are a lot of arguments for the ultimate edition, but in my opinion it is easier to say "IDEA does cost money compared to other IDEs but it is way superior and good quality does have its price" than "Of course there is also a free edition of IDEA but we do need the commercial license since that edition does have feature x/y/z".
Do you also have to convince them to provide monitors / an area to work / internet connection? Why is paying for a good product / hard work so foreign to people?
Guest wrote:
On 16/10/2009 12:06, Christian Schwanke wrote:
On the other hand, it will be difficult to convince others to pay for a product when you seem to get the same product for free. I've been lobbying my company for quite some time to buy corporate/commercial licenses for the in-house development team and I finally convinced them that we should buy a couple of licenses when Maia is finally released. Guess what ? After the German IT-News-Website heise.de reported on the open source edition, I immediately got an email that we should probably wait and not buy the licenses right now. Now I have to argue why we need the "ultimate edition" and why the free edition is not sufficient. Granted, there are a lot of arguments for the ultimate edition, but in my opinion it is easier to say "IDEA does cost money compared to other IDEs but it is way superior and good quality does have its price" than "Of course there is also a free edition of IDEA but we do need the commercial license since that edition does have feature x/y/z".
Do you also have to convince them to provide monitors / an area to work / internet connection?
No, because even to someone who is absolutely not in the "IT thing" but rather manages the financial aspects of a company the necessity of a monitor or an internet connection is obvious. But imagine there would be an offer for a low-bandwith internet connection that comes for free. The bandwith might not be sufficient but it is a difference having to argue for the necessity of an internet connection at all compared to having to argue for a high bandwith connection over a low bandwith connection. The people who have to make decisions how to spent budgets do have to make sure that money is spent in the right place - that is their job and therefore I think it is quite understandble that they have to question the decision to buy a product when the same product is offered in a free edition as well.
I am not saying that it is impossible to convince my company to buy the ultimate edition - I'm just saying it is more difficult to promote the purchase of commercial licenses for a product that seems to be offered for free. I know there is the comparison matrix that clearly indicates the difference between the free and the ultimate edition. But the people that have to decide are not necessarily in a position to understand what each of these rows in the matrix really mean. At the end of the day, the people deciding on the budget will have to rely on the technical expertise of the IT people and if they trust the IT people there shouldn't be a problem but it makes the argument a bit more difficult and I would rather like to work on our codebase than having to write emails explaining why we still need to invest in a tool when that tool is open sourced. Just believe me that it doesn't really help if a product is offered in two different editions, one being free and one being commercial.
Why is paying for a good product / hard work so foreign to people?
I don't know that - I've paid for my personal license myself because I really appreciate the work and the attention to detail that obiviously goes into all Jetbrains products ;-) I don't think it is foreign to people to pay for a good product - but finance people do think that it is foreign to pay for a good product if the product can also be used free of charge. As I explained above: put yourself in the position of someone who has to decide wether a commercial license is bought or not. You are responsible for the budget and you don't want to make a wrong decision. Offering IDEA both commercially and as a free community edition doesn't make it easier for those who have to decide.
In my case, the timing of the announcement was really bad luck: it wasn't easy to convince our finance staff that we should buy IDEA when there are free IDEs like Netbeans or Eclipse available. I finally got them to agree - now imagine my delight when I got an email this morning recommending not to buy IDEA because it is open sourced.
Sounds crazy, most financial people I've interacted with are usually able to understand the intricacies of various product offering sales strategies. Just sounds like they misunderstood that this product's version of open source is not the same as the other IDEs. Sucks either way but I don't see how jetbrains has done anything other than something positive.
metrixon wrote:
Do you also have to convince them to provide monitors / an area to work / internet connection?
No, because even to someone who is absolutely not in the "IT thing" but rather manages the financial aspects of a company the necessity of a monitor or an internet connection is obvious. But imagine there would be an offer for a low-bandwith internet connection that comes for free. The bandwith might not be sufficient but it is a difference having to argue for the necessity of an internet connection at all compared to having to argue for a high bandwith connection over a low bandwith connection. The people who have to make decisions how to spent budgets do have to make sure that money is spent in the right place - that is their job and therefore I think it is quite understandble that they have to question the decision to buy a product when the same product is offered in a free edition as well.
I am not saying that it is impossible to convince my company to buy the ultimate edition - I'm just saying it is more difficult to promote the purchase of commercial licenses for a product that seems to be offered for free. I know there is the comparison matrix that clearly indicates the difference between the free and the ultimate edition. But the people that have to decide are not necessarily in a position to understand what each of these rows in the matrix really mean. At the end of the day, the people deciding on the budget will have to rely on the technical expertise of the IT people and if they trust the IT people there shouldn't be a problem but it makes the argument a bit more difficult and I would rather like to work on our codebase than having to write emails explaining why we still need to invest in a tool when that tool is open sourced. Just believe me that it doesn't really help if a product is offered in two different editions, one being free and one being commercial.
Why is paying for a good product / hard work so foreign to people?
I don't know that - I've paid for my personal license myself because I really appreciate the work and the attention to detail that obiviously goes into all Jetbrains products ;-) I don't think it is foreign to people to pay for a good product - but finance people do think that it is foreign to pay for a good product if the product can also be used free of charge. As I explained above: put yourself in the position of someone who has to decide wether a commercial license is bought or not. You are responsible for the budget and you don't want to make a wrong decision. Offering IDEA both commercially and as a free community edition doesn't make it easier for those who have to decide.
In my case, the timing of the announcement was really bad luck: it wasn't easy to convince our finance staff that we should buy IDEA when there are free IDEs like Netbeans or Eclipse available. I finally got them to agree - now imagine my delight when I got an email this morning recommending not to buy IDEA because it is open sourced.
Sounds crazy, most financial people I've interacted with are usually able to understand the intricacies of various product offering sales strategies. Just sounds like they misunderstood that this product's version of open source is not the same as the other IDEs. Obviously
The problem is not understanding the sales strategies, it is understanding the technical details and assessing wether the ultimate edition is required or not.
Sucks either way but I don't see how jetbrains has done anything other than something positive.
I fully agree on this one - I never wanted to make the impression that the move to open source IDEA was a bad one. As I said in one of my earlier posts, I do see the positive aspects of this decision (for example reaching a wider audience, having outside contributors, etc) and on a personal level I welcome this move. I just wanted to say that there might also be a downside in offering a free edition and of course there is my personal frustration having to argue again in favor of the commercial license ;-)
It's a shame that I shall have to buy the Ultimate edition just to use Spring. To be clear, I do not whinge that Spring support is not offered for free in the Community edition -- it's fair enough that the 'enterprisey' and 'emerging' technologies are offered in the commercial version of IDEA. What I personally would appreciate is if the various plugin components from the "Ultimate" edition were offered separately at a reasonable price. That way I'd install a Community edition and install the extra paid-for components that I do actually need, instead of paying for a bunch of stuff I shall never use. The Ultimate edition could then essentially be a discounted all-inclusive bundle of plugins (cheaper than buying separately, in case you do use lots of different technologies).
And one last remark: I hate the name "Ultimate Edition" - it does remind me of the VISTA-Version-madness.
I agree on this point, too, especially because on Vista the Ultimate edition was one which contains features normal professionals did not need and hence did not use that edition.
+100 Like you guys, I didn't like the name "Ultimate" edition, and that is why I suggested they rename to "Professional" edition. Red flags will immediately be set off when you tell purchasing managers that need to buy the "Ultimate" edition. Nobody needed to buy Vista "Ultimate", so managers/buyers will think nobody needs to buy "Ultimate" IntelliJ. I strongly recommend Jetbrains rename "Ultimate" edition to "Professional" edition or something else.
Please note that the Community Edition does NOT include a feature that shows you an "Unsupported project type" message box and shuts down as soon as you open a project that uses Spring or Hibernate. So, of course, all the features for basic editing, navigation and refactoring are available for projects with any technology. Moreover, the Community Edition fully supports XML - and that includes code completion of Java class names in framework configuration files, navigation from those to the actual Java code, and support for the Rename refactoring. So we are not holding back on anything essential in this regard.
Dmitry,
I think you misunderstood what I meant by basic editing, navigation, and refactoring. What I mean is language aware basic editing, navigation, and refactoring. For example, if I find usages for a java method, it will show me where it is being called in a JSP file.
Re: XML, yes it is in community edition, but HTML, XHTML, CSS, XLS, XPath, PHP, Groovy, Scala, Ruby, JSP, Javascript, Flex ActionScript,etc. are not.
I tried IntelliJ Community edition, and this is what it did for my project. After reading my project, it said it detected four unknown facets Spring, JSP, Web, and Flex. If I try to edit a JSP file, it says it is an unknown file type. See attached pictures. Same thing happens if I try to open a CSS file, a Javascript file, an ActionScript file, etc. IntelliJ says Unknown File type.
If I load same project into Eclipse 3.5 J2EE edition, it at least shows my JSP, CSS, JS, AS, etc. files with correct syntax coloring. So, right now IntelliJ Community edition is behaving worse than Eclipse 3.5 J2EE edition, which is pretty bad because Eclipse doesn't do much else besides pretty print the different language files. Eclipse J2EE doesn't have language aware find usages, e.g. it won't show you where a javascript method is called in a JSP file. You need to get myeclipse for that.
At a minimum, IC should have all support all filetypes of IU, and at least be able to display the files in the editor.
I still believe the best strategy is to put all the langage support in Community edition, and keep pro features in a Professional edition. Features not required to format/edit/navigate/compile code should have been reserved for the pro edition, e.g. most/all the inspections and advanced refactoring and analysis features.
If Jetbrains was OK about opensourcing all their code related to java language, I don't see why they want to keep other languages proprietary, since IntellIj had much more advanced features for Java than the other languages.
I was thinking about this over the weekend, and another concern I have going forward is there will be more incentive for Jetbrains on the features exclusive to the Ultimate edition because that is where the $$ is, and there will be a disincenetive for them to put alot of effort into features which are open-sourced in the community edition.
I think that is why I don't like that Jetbrains put 100% of all their java features (refactoring, inspections, etc.) into the community edition -- because that means probably very little effort is going to go into improving the java support.
In reality, it's not different from what was already happening the past several releases as you could see Jetbrains was expending effort in supporting new languages (sql,scala,groovy,ruby,etc..) and new technologies (flex,gwt,spring, railes,grails,etc..), and while there was continued improvements in core java area, progress has been pretty slow IMO. There are 1000s of worthy bugs/enhancements in the IDEA feedback/backlog related to java language features, refactoring, inspections, etc., and now going forward there will be less incentive to implement those bugs/enhancements since all java language features are free now. In some cases, Eclipse has started to pass IntelliJ in some areas, e.g. formatting static imports which came up recently, although Eclipse is still far behind IntelliJ's java support overall.
The reason I mention this is because even though my company's product is a smorgsborg of technologies Java, JSP, JS,CSS, Flex AS, HTML, XML, SQL, Servlets, Spring, Hibernate,etc. most of the features we liked in each new IntelliJ release were either editor features or java-related features, e.g. enhancements to refactorings or new inspections/fixes, or non-language non-technology features like improved VCS integration. Some of this is due to the fact that we use ant build.xml scripts to build and deploy to application servers so we don't use Jetbrains' application server integration, and we don't use the flex support since we use FlexBuilder. Even though we use many languages and technologies in our codebase, in terms of lines of code, java is still far and away #1, then flex actionscript mxml is solid #2, and then everything else is small % in the codebase
The IDEA Ultimate features which we use are Code Duplicates detection, HTML/XHTML/CSS/XSL/XPath, JSP, Javascript/Actionscript, Perforce VCS support, Hibernate.
Anyway, I hope the pace of fixes/enhancements to java language support doesn't get worse with this community / ultimate edition structure.
Red flags will immediately be set off when you tell purchasing managers that need to buy the "Ultimate" edition. Nobody needed to buy Vista "Ultimate", so managers/buyers will think nobody needs to buy "Ultimate" IntelliJ.
I was thinking about this over the weekend, and another concern I have going forward is there will be more incentive for Jetbrains on the features exclusive to the Ultimate edition because that is where the $$ is, and there will be a disincenetive for them to put alot of effort into features which are open-sourced in the community edition.
>
I think that is why I don't like that Jetbrains put 100% of all their java features (refactoring, inspections, etc.) into the community edition -- because that means probably very little effort is going to go into improving the java support. --- Original message URL: http://www.jetbrains.net/devnet/message/5247298#5247298
But remember, it's being open-sourced, so you now will have thousands of developers out there able to fix the bugs and implement the features you refer to. If IDEA CE was being given away for free but remaining closed source I'd share your sentiment, but making it open-sourced means that all those little niggles that have been sitting around in the backlog for so many years now actually have a chance to be fixed. I think(/hope) the future is actually brighter for core java support, not more bleak. N.
BTW I should add - I think this is an excellent move. Hopefully Jetbrains can combine the best of open source and the closed model - lots of willing hands to help fix bugs, but still controlled and with a consistent philosophy. Congratulations!
And debugging my plugin just got a lot easier :-)
Cheers,
Colin
You and I had exactly the same reaction. Apparently a lot of people did since the web site is already hammered.
My only worry is that they're excluding too much. There's no application server support _at all_ in the community edition.
Perhaps segregating application server support into free/open-source (Tomcat, Jetty) and commercial (Weblogic/Websphere) would make sense?
I think that would open it up to too many people. Plus, app server support isn't much good to you without Javascript, JavaEE, HTML support. Once you add all that you're not really excluding much.
They're excluding wayyyyyy too much. If the goal is to expose IDEA to more people, why exclude PHP, Ruby, Flex and Javascript developers ?
Give him an inch and he will take a mile...
JetBrains, congratulations to this surprising decision. Hopefully it
will pay off for you in the long-term.
- Sebastian
Grant Smith schrieb:
I also think "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth" is applicable. I think this is a great move by JetBrains, and I am very appreciative of it.
A key market/demographic the community will be great for is students. Students only need the functionality included in the community edition, at least early in their academic careers. Then when they move on, they can upgrade to the Ultimate edition via an academic license.And finally upon graduation buy a personal license.
And besides, JetBrians can always offer more features later in the community edition if the initial results of the program warrant it.
Don't get me wrong - I'm sincerely appreciative. My point is that the primary reason for the Community Edition (according to the website) is to expose IDEA to more developers. I guess they only want new Java developers... Just doesn't make much business sense to me.
OMG Wow. Jetbrains is going to let the unwashed open source masses get their grubby hands on the immaculate IntelliJ codebase that's been refactored a million times into unparalleled brilliance. I'm not sure to be excited or worried.
I don't like the division of features between Community vs Ultimate editions.
I think it would be better to have Community vs Professional editions.
Let me explain.
Refer to comparison matrix http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/nextversion/editions_comparison_matrix.html
Refer to competitor myeclipse http://www.myeclipseide.com/module-htmlpages-display-pid-1.html
Alot of the features tossed in the Ultimate edition are for new and emerging technologies, e.g. languages/platforms android, and ruby, and technologies like grails, rails, gwt, etc.
IMO, all of those should be in the community edition, because Jetbrains should be trying to capture the mindshare in those emergent areas. It makes no sense to restrict those in an "Ultimate" edition. By definition, emerging technologies are not ready for mainstream professional use, so I don't see why Jetbrains doesn't add support for these first in Community edition, and then deliver professional features on top of that at a later date. Jetbrains has a great reputation for quality cutting edge software, and I believe they can deliver support for these emerging technologies faster and better than the open source mob, and could attract users. Although, I wouldn't break my back trying to support *all* emerging technologies. Jetbrains needs to focus on those technologies which have greatest potential to see mainstream use in professional software engineering.
So, I would include some minimum support for all languages like SQL, XML, HTML, XSL,XPath, Ruby, Groovy, etc. and all Frameworks and Technologies like JSP, Hibernate, Grails, Rails, etc. A new user should be able to download IntelliJ and load source code for any language using any technology and have their socks wowed off!
Instead of "Ultimate" edition, I would have a "Professional" edition which builds on the basic support with features used by professional software developers,e.g.
* Code coverage
* Source Level JSP debugging
* Commerical source code control integration
[VCS integration is a big hook for commercial software developers. I could not use IntelliJ if it didn't have support for Perforce, no matter how good it was..]
* Commercial AppServer Integration [WebLogic, WebSphere]
IntelliJ's library of inspections with quickfixes is very valuable and Eclipse/Netbeans is still nowhere close to IntelliJ in this area. Automated code analysis and repair is a professional feature, and should not be undervalued. MyEclipse doesn't place much value on that because they aren't doing much in that area. Maybe Analyze->Inspect Code should only be in professional edition, or maybe the inspections labeled as "(Avaiable only in Analyze->Inspect Code)" should only be in professional edition. Another example, Maia new feature "Dataflow to this" and "Dataflow from this" could be in professional version only. I would like to see more work in automated code anaylsis and repair, e.g. Code->QuickFix/Cleanup Code feature I talked about a couple years ago http://youtrack.jetbrains.net/issue/IDEADEV-17781
VCS integration is also a professional software engineering feature. This might be controversial, but I'm wondering if even CVS, SVN, Git integration should be restricted to the professional edition? Or you could have an edition between Community and Professional.
My key point is that Jetbrains should not hold back on any features required for people to do basic editing, navigation, and refactoring of your code, no matter the language or technology. But features beyond that like integration with VCS or AppServers, automated code anlysis and repair, etc. could all be restricted to a pay version. I think Jetbrains marketing is caught up playing technology bingo with myeclipse, e.g. "XML", "SQL", "JSP", "Flex", "CSS" => "BINGO"!!!!! You can beat myeclipse at their own game by offering support for all languages and technologies by default, with profesional features restricted to a pay version. If you hold back the new / emerging languages in an "Ultimate" version, IntelliJ won't compare as well to myeclipse.
There are other features which I think make more sense in Professional Edition, but I don't know how they can be enforced if the code is open sources,e.g. Community only allow one project to be opened at a time.
I hope Jetbrains is successful with this change in strategy.
-Alex
Alex,
Please note that the Community Edition does NOT include a feature that shows you an "Unsupported project type" message box and shuts down as soon as you open a project that uses Spring or Hibernate. So, of course, all the features for basic editing, navigation and refactoring are available for projects with any technology. Moreover, the Community Edition fully supports XML - and that includes code completion of Java class names in framework configuration files, navigation from those to the actual Java code, and support for the Rename refactoring. So we are not holding back on anything essential in this regard.
On the other hand, it doesn't make much business sense for us to release everything we have for free.
I guess we could spend the next year dividing each of the features we have into "non-professional" and "professional" parts, and then announcing that the Community Edition includes "basic" support for Flex, PHP, Android etc. and the Ultimate edition includes "advanced" support for all of those, but that would be really, really hard and confusing for everyone.
I'm not sure whether I should be happy with this step or not. We also need
to develop plain web-applications on tomcat, so we can't use the free
version. But being honest, ~130€ each year for the update is very cheap, so
I never complain(ed) about the price. Unfortunately, now our advantage of
using the best tool and not the cheapest is melting.
Tom
That's a brilliant idea... BUT, i think that removing commercial VCS plugins from the community edition is a bad decision IMHO. I wanted to make IntelliJ available to all members of my team and make them learn and love it. I wanted to show my management that TeamCity would be the next step to improve the quality of the software we produce... I was so disappointed to see that...
Gilles
I also have an ambivalent feeling about the step of creating an Open-Source-Edition.
I've been a paying customer for quite some time and I'll probably upgrade my personal license regardless of the community-edition, since I do a lot of work on web applications and that area is not covered by the community edition. I am a big fan of IDEA and I really enjoy working with this tool - I think it is great that more people will get to know IDEA and its quality.
However, I'm not sure wether users that come from Netbeans or Eclipse will be convinced by the community edition to buy into a commercial or personal license because a lot of the things these free IDEs can do are missing from the community edition. So I expect these users to give IDEA a try but not to buy the ultimate edition - I would expect that these users will switch back to whatever IDE they are used to.
For example the fact that I can do a simple "Rename"-Refactoring and see this refactoring reflected not only in Java-Code but also in my spring-xml-files, my JSP codes etc. or the ability to refactor CSS-Classes and have those changes updated on all HTML fragments is really great. But as far as I understand the community edition, those things will not work there since there is not support for HTML/CSS,Javascript and Spring.
I still think that IDEA is superior in nearly every aspect concerning code related work but I would think that potential customers will get a much better impression by using a full featured trial version rather than a feature-limited but free community edition.
On the other hand, it will be difficult to convince others to pay for a product when you seem to get the same product for free. I've been lobbying my company for quite some time to buy corporate/commercial licenses for the in-house development team and I finally convinced them that we should buy a couple of licenses when Maia is finally released. Guess what ? After the German IT-News-Website heise.de reported on the open source edition, I immediately got an email that we should probably wait and not buy the licenses right now.
Now I have to argue why we need the "ultimate edition" and why the free edition is not sufficient. Granted, there are a lot of arguments for the ultimate edition, but in my opinion it is easier to say "IDEA does cost money compared to other IDEs but it is way superior and good quality does have its price" than "Of course there is also a free edition of IDEA but we do need the commercial license since that edition does have feature x/y/z".
And one last remark: I hate the name "Ultimate Edition" - it does remind me of the VISTA-Version-madness. I think "IDEA Basic" and "IDEA Professional" would be a better naming scheme - but anyway, it is too late for this criticism ;-)
I agree on this point, too, especially because on Vista the Ultimate edition
was one which contains features normal professionals did not need and hence
did not use that edition.
I don't think so, because IIRC IDEA 9 is not yet released and hence no
Ultimate edition sold.
I assume users will still be able to get a 30-day trial of the full version.
I think the best thing about opening up the platform is that it will greatly ease plugin development, and will allow others to release specialised IDEs for other languages. This alone should greatly improve the IDEA ecosystem. That and the fact that people might have some chance of fixing their pet bugs is huge. I hope that Jetbrains can dedicate more support resource to people who want to help fix bugs than they did previously to plugin development, that would help a lot.
On 16/10/2009 12:06, Christian Schwanke wrote:
--- Original message URL:
This is a very good point and a situation I seem to be running into
already :(
N.
Do you also have to convince them to provide monitors / an area to work / internet connection? Why is paying for a good product / hard work so foreign to people?
No, because even to someone who is absolutely not in the "IT thing" but rather manages the financial aspects of a company the necessity of a monitor or an internet connection is obvious. But imagine there would be an offer for a low-bandwith internet connection that comes for free. The bandwith might not be sufficient but it is a difference having to argue for the necessity of an internet connection at all compared to having to argue for a high bandwith connection over a low bandwith connection.
The people who have to make decisions how to spent budgets do have to make sure that money is spent in the right place - that is their job and therefore I think it is quite understandble that they have to question the decision to buy a product when the same product is offered in a free edition as well.
I am not saying that it is impossible to convince my company to buy the ultimate edition - I'm just saying it is more difficult to promote the purchase of commercial licenses for a product that seems to be offered for free. I know there is the comparison matrix that clearly indicates the difference between the free and the ultimate edition. But the people that have to decide are not necessarily in a position to understand what each of these rows in the matrix really mean.
At the end of the day, the people deciding on the budget will have to rely on the technical expertise of the IT people and if they trust the IT people there shouldn't be a problem but it makes the argument a bit more difficult and I would rather like to work on our codebase than having to write emails explaining why we still need to invest in a tool when that tool is open sourced.
Just believe me that it doesn't really help if a product is offered in two different editions, one being free and one being commercial.
I don't know that - I've paid for my personal license myself because I really appreciate the work and the attention to detail that obiviously goes into all Jetbrains products ;-) I don't think it is foreign to people to pay for a good product - but finance people do think that it is foreign to pay for a good product if the product can also be used free of charge.
As I explained above: put yourself in the position of someone who has to decide wether a commercial license is bought or not. You are responsible for the budget and you don't want to make a wrong decision. Offering IDEA both commercially and as a free community edition doesn't make it easier for those who have to decide.
In my case, the timing of the announcement was really bad luck:
it wasn't easy to convince our finance staff that we should buy IDEA when there are free IDEs like Netbeans or Eclipse available. I finally got them to agree - now imagine my delight when I got an email this morning recommending not to buy IDEA because it is open sourced.
Sounds crazy, most financial people I've interacted with are usually able to understand the intricacies of various product offering sales strategies. Just sounds like they misunderstood that this product's version of open source is not the same as the other IDEs. Sucks either way but I don't see how jetbrains has done anything other than something positive.
The problem is not understanding the sales strategies, it is understanding the technical details and assessing wether the ultimate edition is required or not.
I fully agree on this one - I never wanted to make the impression that the move to open source IDEA was a bad one. As I said in one of my earlier posts, I do see the positive aspects of this decision (for example reaching a wider audience, having outside contributors, etc) and on a personal level I welcome this move.
I just wanted to say that there might also be a downside in offering a free edition and of course there is my personal frustration having to argue again in favor of the commercial license ;-)
It's a shame that I shall have to buy the Ultimate edition just to use Spring. To be clear, I do not whinge that Spring support is not offered for free in the Community edition -- it's fair enough that the 'enterprisey' and 'emerging' technologies are offered in the commercial version of IDEA. What I personally would appreciate is if the various plugin components from the "Ultimate" edition were offered separately at a reasonable price. That way I'd install a Community edition and install the extra paid-for components that I do actually need, instead of paying for a bunch of stuff I shall never use. The Ultimate edition could then essentially be a discounted all-inclusive bundle of plugins (cheaper than buying separately, in case you do use lots of different technologies).
Are the people deciding your budget using OpenOffice?
That I can totally understand :-)
+100 Like you guys, I didn't like the name "Ultimate" edition, and that is why I suggested they rename to "Professional" edition. Red flags will immediately be set off when you tell purchasing managers that need to buy the "Ultimate" edition. Nobody needed to buy Vista "Ultimate", so managers/buyers will think nobody needs to buy "Ultimate" IntelliJ. I strongly recommend Jetbrains rename "Ultimate" edition to "Professional" edition or something else.
Dmitry,
I think you misunderstood what I meant by basic editing, navigation, and refactoring. What I mean is language aware basic editing, navigation, and refactoring. For example, if I find usages for a java method, it will show me where it is being called in a JSP file.
Re: XML, yes it is in community edition, but HTML, XHTML, CSS, XLS, XPath, PHP, Groovy, Scala, Ruby, JSP, Javascript, Flex ActionScript,etc. are not.
I tried IntelliJ Community edition, and this is what it did for my project. After reading my project, it said it detected four unknown facets Spring, JSP, Web, and Flex. If I try to edit a JSP file, it says it is an unknown file type. See attached pictures. Same thing happens if I try to open a CSS file, a Javascript file, an ActionScript file, etc. IntelliJ says Unknown File type.
If I load same project into Eclipse 3.5 J2EE edition, it at least shows my JSP, CSS, JS, AS, etc. files with correct syntax coloring. So, right now IntelliJ Community edition is behaving worse than Eclipse 3.5 J2EE edition, which is pretty bad because Eclipse doesn't do much else besides pretty print the different language files. Eclipse J2EE doesn't have language aware find usages, e.g. it won't show you where a javascript method is called in a JSP file. You need to get myeclipse for that.
At a minimum, IC should have all support all filetypes of IU, and at least be able to display the files in the editor.
I still believe the best strategy is to put all the langage support in Community edition, and keep pro features in a Professional edition. Features not required to format/edit/navigate/compile code should have been reserved for the pro edition, e.g. most/all the inspections and advanced refactoring and analysis features.
If Jetbrains was OK about opensourcing all their code related to java language, I don't see why they want to keep other languages proprietary, since IntellIj had much more advanced features for Java than the other languages.
-Alex
Attachment(s):
idea-ic-90-96-unknown-filetype-jsp.png
idea-ic-90-96-unknown-facets-jsp-spring-web-flex.png
I was thinking about this over the weekend, and another concern I have going forward is there will be more incentive for Jetbrains on the features exclusive to the Ultimate edition because that is where the $$ is, and there will be a disincenetive for them to put alot of effort into features which are open-sourced in the community edition.
I think that is why I don't like that Jetbrains put 100% of all their java features (refactoring, inspections, etc.) into the community edition -- because that means probably very little effort is going to go into improving the java support.
In reality, it's not different from what was already happening the past several releases as you could see Jetbrains was expending effort in supporting new languages (sql,scala,groovy,ruby,etc..) and new technologies (flex,gwt,spring, railes,grails,etc..), and while there was continued improvements in core java area, progress has been pretty slow IMO. There are 1000s of worthy bugs/enhancements in the IDEA feedback/backlog related to java language features, refactoring, inspections, etc., and now going forward there will be less incentive to implement those bugs/enhancements since all java language features are free now. In some cases, Eclipse has started to pass IntelliJ in some areas, e.g. formatting static imports which came up recently, although Eclipse is still far behind IntelliJ's java support overall.
The reason I mention this is because even though my company's product is a smorgsborg of technologies Java, JSP, JS,CSS, Flex AS, HTML, XML, SQL, Servlets, Spring, Hibernate,etc. most of the features we liked in each new IntelliJ release were either editor features or java-related features, e.g. enhancements to refactorings or new inspections/fixes, or non-language non-technology features like improved VCS integration. Some of this is due to the fact that we use ant build.xml scripts to build and deploy to application servers so we don't use Jetbrains' application server integration, and we don't use the flex support since we use FlexBuilder. Even though we use many languages and technologies in our codebase, in terms of lines of code, java is still far and away #1, then flex actionscript mxml is solid #2, and then everything else is small % in the codebase
The IDEA Ultimate features which we use are Code Duplicates detection, HTML/XHTML/CSS/XSL/XPath, JSP, Javascript/Actionscript, Perforce VCS support, Hibernate.
Anyway, I hope the pace of fixes/enhancements to java language support doesn't get worse with this community / ultimate edition structure.
-Alex
On 16/10/2009 23:47, Alex wrote:
>
Yep, the 'Ultimate' moniker has certainly been a euphemism for
'Excessively Extravagant'...
N.
On 19/10/2009 12:28, Alex wrote:
>
But remember, it's being open-sourced, so you now will have thousands of
developers out there able to fix the bugs and implement the features you
refer to. If IDEA CE was being given away for free but remaining closed
source I'd share your sentiment, but making it open-sourced means that
all those little niggles that have been sitting around in the backlog
for so many years now actually have a chance to be fixed. I
think(/hope) the future is actually brighter for core java support, not
more bleak.
N.
That's a pretty interesting idea...