And it’s crazy how cheap our tools are! My plumber has a $10,000 camera. Meanwhile, for less than $2000, I have the same laptop that I would own if I were a billionaire (shameless plug for Framework). And that’s my most expensive piece of productivity equipment, by far (especially when annualized… sure I can spend $5k on a desk but I won’t need a new one every few years and it would very clearly be a luxury, not a productivity boost over a $1000 desk).

I am personally happy to pay for productivity enhancing software. If you make software that helps me and charge a reasonable price (and Jetbrains prices are quite reasonable), I want you to get rich and make an immediate profit so that you are incentivized to keep making and maintaining great software and don’t feel compelled to sell.

> What feels wrong about it?

I guess the best way I can articulate it, is that suddenly I have this additional dependency that needs monetary investment.

If the price or my financial situation changes in the future, it might get harder to justify that investment. All of the sudden, I might not be able to share single click project run profiles or information about workflows with anyone who hasn't made that investment like I have (and are using something else).

For some software, the company going under might also mean the package disappearing, as opposed to the community (at least sometimes) taking over. In some cases, there might also be changes that are done behind closed doors, that I don't really have much of a voice in making or even changing on my own accord.

The closest analogy I can come up with is opting for Windows Server as opposed to Debian, the latter of which is free, open and abundant to the point of being available pretty much anywhere and will most likely remain so for a long time. Not that there's anything wrong with Windows Server, but with Debian there are few concerns when opting for it.

That said, as far as IDEs go, JetBrains have done a good job and pretty much everything right (if I'm not mistaken, even if you stop your subscription, you can still use the version you have, just not the latest releases). Coming from a Java background, their offerings are also better than NetBeans and Eclipse, at least in my eyes. And having Rider be available on many platforms is also great, since I'm not exactly going to be running Visual Studio on Linux, yet like a consistent experience across OSes (MonoDevelop was a little bit niche).

Overall, I feel like me giving them money is a good choice, but still can't shake that gut feeling about commercial software. Then again, I also pay for GitKraken, for similar reasons and that also feels fully justified. I might also pay for MobaXTerm in the near future, because if you're ever on Windows, that thing feels like it manages SSH connections and does other stuff (SFTP, VNC/RDP) better than many of the solutions on Linux distros currently do (e.g. Remmina).