I rarely go looking for customer support for anything except on Stack Overflow. 90% of the time, community driven forums are way more helpful for most products than the original company... most developers give of their own time there by donation, to give back to the rest of the community that feed that cycle. I like that I can give back there, just as I can receive help. If Jetbrains suddenly required that their developers boycott such forums, I would wager it would be a downward spiral for loyalty to them.
I'm not knocking Jetbrains here, so don't take this like a personal gripe at their company. I've been a faithful purchaser of Resharper for a number of years and will likely continue. I'm quite happy to pay for software, and I pay for thousands of dollars worth of software and licenses every year to do my job. Developers have families to feed. I know, I am one and I have one. But I don't expect to write a piece of software that makes your life easier and say - hey, by the way, you can have that software for $10 a month and when you stop paying me, it stops working.
I don't mind paying for a support contract if I feel I need one, but that should not be the default model for the software. I'd rather pay for the software outright and then if I feel I will need support, pay for a support contract too. But I don't want to be told "the only way to 'purchase' our software is via a perpetual rental agreement."... as someone said below somewhere - that's how poor people stay poor.
What is being sold here is effectively the same as a perpetual support contract that comes with some free software... which stops working if you stop paying for the support contract because you decide you no longer require support...
I'm not knocking Jetbrains here, so don't take this like a personal gripe at their company. I've been a faithful purchaser of Resharper for a number of years and will likely continue. I'm quite happy to pay for software, and I pay for thousands of dollars worth of software and licenses every year to do my job. Developers have families to feed. I know, I am one and I have one. But I don't expect to write a piece of software that makes your life easier and say - hey, by the way, you can have that software for $10 a month and when you stop paying me, it stops working.
I don't mind paying for a support contract if I feel I need one, but that should not be the default model for the software. I'd rather pay for the software outright and then if I feel I will need support, pay for a support contract too. But I don't want to be told "the only way to 'purchase' our software is via a perpetual rental agreement."... as someone said below somewhere - that's how poor people stay poor.
What is being sold here is effectively the same as a perpetual support contract that comes with some free software... which stops working if you stop paying for the support contract because you decide you no longer require support...