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WebStorm and Rider Are Now Free for Non-Commercial Use

92 points| yett | 1 year ago |blog.jetbrains.com

58 comments

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lolinder|1 year ago

My JetBrains all products pack is one of the few subscriptions that I enthusiastically pay every year. People talk about Copilot or Claude as a force multiplier, but I use both and would rather give them both up than switch full-time to VS Code or similar. Between their git integration, navigation tools, refactors, search, and so on, programming in a large codebase with a JetBrains IDE is just a completely different experience than trying to do it in a lower-power editor.

And, of course, the other reason why I'm so enthusiastic about their products is that they're one of the only companies that has been able to maintain a thoroughly symbiotic relationship with the developer community. They somehow have consistently maintained a healthy balance of giving things away without losing their business—their subscription model is humane (you get to use the last version you paid for indefinitely), they have an open source core, and they lean in more than most to giving their paid products away to students and others who can't pay.

jasonlotito|1 year ago

> My JetBrains all products pack is one of the few subscriptions

I happily pay this every year myself, but I think it's important to note it's not really a subscription. You pay for software, and you keep that software forever. If you stop paying, you still get to keep what you paid for. What you pay for every year are the updates.

I know it's a subtle distinction, but I think it's an important one to make. Again, I happily pay every where, and it acts very much like a subscription, but it's not like a Creative Suite subscription. If you stop paying, you an always just stay on the software you paid for.

TYPE_FASTER|1 year ago

Same here. The JetBrains products are indispensable for me. They've converted me after being an Emacs user for 30 years.

theChaparral|1 year ago

I'm all in with the JetBrains love, but for clarity, you can keep the first version you paid for indefinitely not the last. So if you decide to stop paying the subscription you have to go back to a year old version.

simion314|1 year ago

Same here, I imagine also how had is for them to compete against free products paid by tech giants, they have no choice then be better and threat the users with respect.

sitkack|1 year ago

> Earlier this year, we implemented a new licensing model for our recently introduced IDEs, RustRover and Aqua, making them free for non-commercial use. We’re now extending this model to WebStorm and Rider. If you’re using these IDEs for non-commercial purposes, such as learning, open-source project development, content creation, or hobby development, you can now do so for free.

scblzn|1 year ago

However, be careful with the terms of non-commercial usage (Enforced heavy metrics)

"You agree that the product will send usage data to validate your compliance with the license terms and anonymous feature usage statistics..."

"The information collected under Sections 4.1. and 4.2. may include but is not limited to frameworks, file templates used in the Product, actions invoked, and other interactions with the Product’s features."

Triangle9349|1 year ago

Huge! Forced data collection, I hope at least the code is not sent for training

anstarovoyt|1 year ago

As mentioned in the blog post, the statistics include IDE-related data, such as user actions, and basic information about the project, including frameworks and libraries (though limited to a predefined whitelist). Overall, this is quite similar to the data collection done by EAP for the products.

Source code is never sent under any circumstances.

simion314|1 year ago

There is enough of code on the internet already for big tech to train , what is probably missing is some scoring or labeling for that code so this AIs stop suggesting outdated stuff or bad stuff.

OutOfHere|1 year ago

JetBrains fanboys won't understand or acknowledge that the free versions of JetBrains IDEs are just not competitive anymore against VSCode. This is for multiple reasons. For example, these features are present in VSCode for free, but not in JetBrains IDEs:

(1) CoPilot code completion (for open source GitHub users)

(2) devcontainer integration

(3) docker integration

ffsm8|1 year ago

As a person that frequently uses vscode and the paid versions of the jetbrains IDEs: Aren't these just Plugins you can install from the settings(both for vscode and jetbrains IDEs)?

Do the free versions not include plugin support?

lostmsu|1 year ago

They are very competitive unless you program in a shitty language like JS. 1 is no different. And the other two are simply useless to me for any kind of development (and yes, I do fullstack, just not with Node).

graypegg|1 year ago

> JetBrains fanboys won't understand or acknowledge that…

If a tool works for them, then it works. I don’t think that’s a lack of understanding on their part.

If the opposing view is « clearly VSCode is objectively the only choice », then I think that camp has a distinct lack of understanding that people’s needs are diverse and no 1 tool solves every problem for all people.

OutOfHere|1 year ago

JetBrains IDEs are better than VSCode, but due to Copilot integration in VSCode, I moved away from JetBrains. I don't see myself going back to JetBrains.

Secondly, the free JetBrains IDEs also lack devcontainer support which is readily present in VSCode. To not use devcontainer is a substantial security hazard.

anstarovoyt|1 year ago

>Secondly, the free JetBrains IDEs also lack devcontainer support

Actually, there is a significant difference between the community versions (e.g. for PyCharm) and the versions available for non-commercial use. The latter are full versions of the products without any reduced functionality, whereas the community editions have certain features trimmed.

simion314|1 year ago

>Secondly, the free JetBrains IDEs also lack devcontainer support which is readily present in VSCode. To not use devcontainer is a substantial security hazard.

Can you elaborate? Is VS Code making containers for you so you are safe from packages or from random plugins you have to install?

appplication|1 year ago

I used to think containers were they way and maybe they are, but so far my experiences with them has been really poor and marked by confusing interfaces and unnecessary GUI ops vs e.g. git ops.

If someone could explain to me how to programmatically perform all lifecycle features with a container (e.g. rebuild etc) without ever having to touch VSC’s special in-IDE command palette that would be incredible.

The current iteration is too much magic at the expense of too little control and visibility.

Larrikin|1 year ago

Copilot works just fine in JetBrains? Microsoft has an official plug-in.