They spent millions of dollars reworking their IDEs to look like a cheap VSCode knockoff and have become obsessed with chasing new, hip users who aren't going to pay what the old timers were because their IDEs are free now.
I genuinely cannot fathom how anyone thinks that this current obsession is a good idea. They had their corner of the market absolutely nailed down and secure. If they'd just kept on quietly making the best IDEs available while everyone else in the industry has lost their damn minds, they'd be golden. A large majority of their users simply wanted a good IDE with an easy to understand UI that just keeps working the same way it's always worked and doesn't randomly change shit and force you to stop working to figure out the new software.
JetBrains absolutely cornered the market for power users, and now they want to piss it all away. Not even for a semi-reasonable profit motive, they're just chasing fads becuase... because everyone else is, I guess.
I canceled my subscription a while ago, and I'll keep using the last version to have a sensible UI until something better comes along.
I don’t like their recent AI features, in large part because my company only allows OpenAI, but everything else that they’re doing is great.
I recently heard this referred to as "the Brother Strategy": where you don't do anything, but become market leader because everyone else has been actively working on making their offering _worse_.
This is the only way I can make sense of this no-expense-spared approach to adopt AI, regardless of its utility in the product.
> For companies: Admins can enable data sharing at a company-wide level. To support early adopters, we’re offering a limited number of free All Products Pack subscriptions to organizations willing to participate while we explore this program. For companies that are not willing to opt in to the program, nothing changes, and as always, admins are in control. > For individuals on non-commercial licenses: Data sharing is enabled by default, but you can turn it off anytime in the settings. > For individuals using commercial licenses, free trials, free community licenses, or EAP builds: Nothing changes. You can still opt in via the settings if you are willing to share data with JetBrains (and your admins, if any, allow it).
And the detail of what is collected:
> We’re now adding the option to allow the collection of detailed code‑related data pertaining to IDE activity, such as edit history, terminal usage, and your interactions with AI features. This may include code snippets, prompt text, and AI responses.
That's called opt-out.
> Data sharing is enabled by default, but you can turn it off anytime
I wonder if this is legal in the EU?
This is basically the subtext of the blogpost: "We know this topic can be polarizing, but we truly believe in the value this change can bring to our tools and to you" is not something you say if you have any real competition and your customers can go elsewhere. Like, where are they gonna go - Eclipse? Visual Studio? XCode?
We are communicating this change via a blog post, emails to users, and in-product. With the 25.2.4 update (in two weeks, October 14), non-commercial users will receive a notification about this change and will be able to review new agreement and take action before any data collection happens. For the rest of the users, nothing is really changing unless they are willing to contribute.
You knew full well from the beginning that this would not be popular, otherwise it would be opt-in, and not opt-out. Great way to ruin your company's reputation.
If not, then JetBrains may be liable immediately when anyone opens project they don't have rights to, or which uses a license incompatible with the model training JetBrains wants to do.
They can't expect every bit of code opened in their editor to be "free" for them to train on, even if they probably say so in their EULA, as they can't be sure the person opening the code has the rights to transfer/distribute it to Jetbrains for them to train on.
I've come to expect better of Jetbrains. This is pretty shitty.
EDIT: Just noticed they are deleting some negative comments from that page. Definitely shitty.
They've become extremely shitty in recent years. I canceled my ten year old subscription to their whole product line because I'm not going to pay to be lied to.
How about making it opt in and you pay me for training your AI?
