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by lol768 3942 days ago
> 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?
1 comments
gorohoroh 3942 days ago
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.

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Aldo_MX 3942 days ago
> 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.

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