[Saugata Guha]

Hello Sir,
I have the following question about subscription.
As I understand, that MyEclipse features which I paid for already, will not work, if I do not continue my subscription.
For example I am using Matisse now, after paying the pro subscription.
After a year, my subscription expires, at that time I would not be able to open my old java files with associated matisse forms, using MyEclipse. Oops, scary.
I hope my understanding is WRONG, WRONG on this.

I might not be able to get new updates because I did not pay for it, that is understandable, but disabling the features for which I already paid for, does not make sense.

It is like a Magazine company saying, you cannot read the old copies of the magazine, you have already received, unless you get a new subscription.

Thanks
Saugata

[Riyad Kalla]

Saugata,

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding here… you are assuming that your *subscription* provides you ownership of the software, which is a more classic approach to software sales. In the traditional sense you would normally pay anywhere from $500 to $4000 for your IDE (prices from competitors to MyEclipse that do not use a subscription approach), and then own that version forever. In the MyEclipse world, you pay a nominal subscription fee ($30 for example for standard) and then have complete access to every version of MyEclipse new and old that you want to use during that term. The only reason we are able to provide MyEclipse for such a cheap price is because it is subscription-based.

If you want to look at a literal example, if you compare MyEclipse Blue ($150/year) to IBM RAD ($4k) you could literally use MyEclipse for almost 27 years before you paid for that single RAD subscription where you are locked into a single version until you buy the new version. With MyEclipse you can upgrade at any point to the newest release as long as your subscription is valid.

So yes, your understanding that the features will disable themself is correct, but your specfic example of not being able to open your Java file is not quite right… you’ll still be able to open the Java file and edit it, you just won’t have access to the visual designer anymore.

Over the years we have gotten a huge amount of praise for this approach, providing an extremely powerful value argument for our tool over our competitors, and I hope you see the same value from it.

[Saugata Guha]

(1)
I guess I have the right understanding. I was hoping that I have it wrong. 🙂
For the business model, there is no right or wrong, it is just a different business model, which makes sense from your point of view and works for you.
(2)
Why did I ask this Question?
My trial subscription just ended, and MyEclipse editor refuses to open the java file which has a matisse form associated with it.
So what you mentioned above

… you’ll still be able to open the Java file and edit it, you just won’t have access to the visual designer anymore.

is false and true. I guess how you interpret it. If you just double click on the java file in the Navigator view it will NOT open it in the editor instead it issues the following message.

This feature is not available because it requires a valid professional subscription.

Now I had to figure out that the default editor which was associated with the java file is MyEclipse matisse editor, and you have to manually associate this file again to the Eclipse java editor. Which tells me that the transition is not really seamless as you described.
This is just one example of the problem.

(3) Subscription model
This term is getting overloaded, your concept of subscription model does not match with mine. And there could be other people like me, if not, you do not have to worry, about this crazy guy. 🙂

(4)
Alternatives:
Just a suggestion, you might want to support both pricing models,
-Your current subscription model, and
– ownership model.
People who are comfortable with ownership model will also have an option to use your product. You do not have to send them to netbeans or jetbrains, unless there is some legal problems.
– rent to own model
After 3 years of subscription you might want to give them the latest copy to keep.

You never know if your company will be in business or not in next few years, so as a technical directory of a project it makes me nervous, to use a tool which will not be available at all when you go out of business. You can always say eclipse will be there so do not worry. If that is the case then I will use eclipse only, why your tool?
Any way I guess you understand my concern. Lot of times the short term goals could be in conflict with long term goals.
Any way I am going to buy one pro version for now. I like what you are trying to do technically, there is lot of room for improvement in all these free products. I started using matisse, and found it cannot go back and forth, if you change the code, the gui does not get reflected with the change. Some times it generates wrong code, when you move your components around few times.
I am not sure if your objective is to also fix matisse problems or just integrate these components seamlessly under one roof.
Thanks
Saugata.

[Riyad Kalla]

Saugata,
We appreciate you taking the time to give us such detailed feedback on the process. I do understand your concern about becoming reliant on a tool using a subscription, and then the company disappears and you can’t use the tool anymore.

I will let management know of the details of your post and consider it in the greater context of servicing our customers incase there are others requesting the same thing.

Again, thank you for the feedback.

[Author]

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