SonarQube multibranch paid feature suddenly?

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Bossk

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Nov 11, 2017, 11:03:27 AM11/11/17
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I just noticed that the highly anticipated multibranch feature of SonarQube 6.7 is suddenly a paid feature according to the Pricing page.
Nothing ever because gave notice of this! It would be part of the LTS release, nothing else was said. I am really disappointed.

This is the one feature that I was looking forward to in 6.7 that kept me from looking at commercial alternatives, because SonarQube Community Edition suited our needs.
We have quite a lot of lines of legacy code, part of the same (monolithic :( ) product, which pushes the price for SonarQube to € 3000 per year.

Lines of code which are analyzed but rarely change (package changes for refactors etc).

As a long time user, I'm quite disappointed to have to pay € 3000 per year compared to 0 before.
You may lose many users to the competition because of this. If I have to pay thousands of euros for 1 specific feature I am really going to check all other options. If the competition offers the same kind of analysis with multibranch, but cheaper then that will be a serious option.

Consider this user feedback.

Mike Barry

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Nov 11, 2017, 11:30:27 AM11/11/17
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I know the feeling, that said these guys need to make money somehow:-) If they gave away all the in demand features for free who would pay for development. I would encourage you to look at their cloud offering. It’s really short money for a small/medium shop with all of the commercial features.

Bossk

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Nov 11, 2017, 12:56:34 PM11/11/17
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SonarCloud is exactly the same pricing per line of code if you're only interested in the extra multibranch feature.

I understand that they have to make money somehow, what my main annoyance is that nowhere in the past have they said that it would be a paid feature, only that it would arrive in the next LTS version. Thereby implying that Java analyses wouldn't significantly change.

Oh and pricing per line of code sounds somewhat reasonable for a cloud solution, but for a local installation it's nonsense. And I really don't trust external parties with our (non-opensource) source code..
Try imagining IntelliJ billing per line of code...

No, I am seriously disappointed in SonarQube and I did my math (counted the Java LoC), I know what this single multibranch feature will cost us for SonarQube. 
For us SonarQube just went from the defacto standard static Java code analysis tool to one of the commercial parties. We may stay with SonarQube (its analysis is still good), but if we do it will most likely be on the CE without multibranch.


Op zaterdag 11 november 2017 17:30:27 UTC+1 schreef Mike Barry:

Mike Barry

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Nov 11, 2017, 2:57:00 PM11/11/17
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This has been public information for quite a while. https://jira.sonarsource.com/browse/BRANCH-1?jql=project%20%3D%20BRANCH if you follow their development at all.

As for the exact same cost, if you are maintaing 500k-1M LOC which is the break even point for the on prem installation 3000 euros should be well worth the benefit you get from the project. You won’t find one cheaper in my experience. As for them leaking your source code, it’s a valid concern. However, most code is not as valuable as people think it is. Microsoft has the windows source code leaked, security sucked but they aren’t any worse off. All these firms make a boatload of money repacking and supporting Hadoop, Linux, etc. The value is in you and your teams knowledge of the platform, it’s supportabliliy etc. Keep in mind, I’m talking about commercial product here. If you have a game or app, someone certainly could repackage it and sell it on the App Store or whatever.

I don’t work for sonarsource but they take a ton of complaints from people who expect their product to be free all the time. My firm doesn’t pay them a dime and we have over 3 million LOC in our on prem installation. If you don’t contribute code back to them or pay them anything they don’t owe you anything.

Nikita Gryzlov

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Nov 12, 2017, 6:37:48 AM11/12/17
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My to cents to paid branching feature.

We have on premise installation of SQ with our own plugin + some free plugins from community edition. Our specific is tons of LOC per every project. 2 LOC is a SMALL project because 80-90% of this code is vendor-code. Analyze of two big projects with Dev edition will cost 35k per year. And we have ~80 projects!
I don't say that branch plugin must be a free option. But we don't need paid language plugins of Dev-edition, support, governance plugin, etc, we need only this branch plugin and just can't pay 50k per year for it!

If it possible - please, give us (and other customers) an ability to buy plugins not in edition bundles.

Nikita Gryzlov

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Nov 12, 2017, 6:38:59 AM11/12/17
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I mean 2 million LOC is a small project

Mike Barry

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Nov 12, 2017, 7:52:07 PM11/12/17
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If you have on prem and you just need the branch plugin it’s 3k euros, not 50k.

Mike Barry

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Nov 12, 2017, 7:53:50 PM11/12/17
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Never mind. I see the new pricing model. Need to digest.

Mike Barry

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Nov 12, 2017, 7:56:05 PM11/12/17
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Actually, if all you need is branching dev edition should be fine. 3k per year. The LOC in the pricing sheet isn’t a limit I think, it’s just a recommendation.

Colin Mueller

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Nov 13, 2017, 9:00:52 AM11/13/17
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It’s a limit.

Dan Tran

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Nov 13, 2017, 3:41:15 PM11/13/17
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does sonarqube notify admin if LOC license about to exceed ( sorry, if I am hijacking this thread)

Colin Mueller

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Nov 13, 2017, 9:43:23 PM11/13/17
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These are questions probably best answered by getting in touch with the SonarSource Sales team: https://www.sonarsource.com/company/contact/

Olivier Gaudin

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Nov 16, 2017, 6:43:24 PM11/16/17
to Colin Mueller, SonarQube
Apologies for slow response on this. 

Henjo, thanks for the user feedback. I thought we had been clear on the fact branch analysis would be a commercial feature. Apologies if it was not the case, it is sometimes difficult to appreciate whether this is clear from the "outside".

For other discussions, I think indeed it would makes sense to get in touch with SonarSource directly as there is no point to discuss individual cases here. FYI, we are planning to roll the same Edition with the same pricing on SonarCloud in the coming months.

Olivier


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