[lol768]

> If you have an existing perpetual license, you can use it infinitely, just as the license agreement stated when you purchased it.

My understanding of the agreement is that you can use the software infinitely with the version that was available on the last day of the subscription term.

As languages and frameworks change, it seems inevitable that everyone who wants to continue working with the latest stable version will be forced to subscribe via the Toolbox (because the renewal of the perpetual license is no longer supported), at which point they no longer own the software they are paying for.

[gorohoroh]

Your understanding of the agreement is correct.

On the other hand, as languages and frameworks change, they will not necessarily be supported by your current IDE. In this case, with a perpetual licensing model you're simply left with a license that you don't use anymore, and you're buying a new license to another IDE. With subscriptions, you switch between them as necessary: either by cancelling subscription to one of them and subscribing to another or by maintaining a subscription to all IDEs (which will also be available starting Nov 2.)

[tomku]

You need to stop living in the Jetbrains marketing department dream world and check back into reality. Losing access to development tools for code that you've already written is not an option. That's why people don't mind paying big chunks of money for good developer tools upfront. Offering a subscription service for dabblers is fine, but not offering a perpetual license alternative is pure insanity.

[thawkins]

Languages dont change that fast, this is more about screwing more money out of the client base, dont try and pass it off as a benifit.

I just bought 2 more phpstorm corporate licences last week, for a trial to see if my two top guys like it, with a view to a departmental rollout. Now im going to have to unload that project as we could never justify a model like this. Where we would lose access to our tools if decide to cut back on the tools budget for a while or stretch it out a bit.

[s73v3r]

According to the post you replied to, if you decide to cut back on the tools budget, you could still continue using the version that was released on the last day of your subscription. You just wouldn't get updates.

[timv]

I believe you have misunderstood the grand-parent post.

the agreement is that you can use the software infinitely with the version that was available on the last day of the subscription term.

Is true for the old licensing model, but not the new model.

As far as I can tell (but JetBrains' attempts to spin this are making it hard to find a definitive statement) if you stop paying your monthly fee, you have to stop using the IDE.

[lol768]

> On the other hand, as languages and frameworks change, they will not necessarily be supported by your current IDE. In this case, with a perpetual licensing model you're simply left with a license that you don't use anymore, and you're buying a new license to another IDE.

I'm not sure I really follow this bit, would you mind clarifying?

I currently have a perpetual license for PhpStorm. Throughout the year, I'm aware many RFCs are created for the PHP language which may or may not be accepted and be incorporated into the language. Currently, I feel pretty confident in knowing that if a language change is made, the PhpStorm developers will update the IDE to support it and I'll be able to download the new version at no extra cost (assuming it was released during the year following the day I purchased the perpetual license).

Would there ever be a situation where this is not the case? Surely PhpStorm will always support the latest version of PHP, unless you're planning on a separate Php7Storm IDE or something?

[gorohoroh]

Your understanding of how perpetual licenses with upgrade subscriptions work is correct.

Also, you can still be pretty confident that as a language support by an IDE (PhpStorm in your case) evolves, new versions will be supported by this very IDE, and we don't have any plans to release a separate Php7Storm :)

I was referring to a different kind of change where you might switch from PHP to Ruby, from C# to Java. C# and PHP are naturally not the best combination to support in the same IDE, meaning you might switch your tools as you go from language to language.

[Aldo_MX]

> Also, you can still be pretty confident that as a language support by an IDE (PhpStorm in your case) evolves, new versions will be supported by this very IDE, and we don't have any plans to release a separate Php7Storm :)

But you can also be confident that 5 years in the future, if you stop paying you will have only 1 choice:

To use the version that supported PHP 7, a deprecated, unsecure and phased out version (or at least, that's what I expect from PHP 7 by the year 2020).

In the past you had the peace of mind that you could continue using the version that supported PHP <current - 1> if you stopped paying.

That peace of mind was one of the most important features of PhpStorm, a feature not implemented in the software, but in the licensing terms.