As we all know, JetBrains is a software company focused on developing IDEs, offering development tools for various programming languages, such as the famous IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm, and others.

Although some IDEs have Community editions that developers can use for free, most require a paid subscription, such as WebStorm and CLion.

However, these subscriptions are relatively expensive for individuals. Therefore, for individual developers, applying for a JetBrains educational license or open source project support is a more suitable choice—commonly known as getting it for free.

Half a year ago, I also used an educational license, applying with an edu email address purchased online. However, after a few months, JetBrains suspended the license, presumably because the edu email address had been abused.

This time, instead of using an educational license, I decided to try applying through an open source project, which is what led to the following.

Application

First, let’s look at the two ways to apply for a free license provided on the official website: Academic Licenses and Open Source Project Support. We’ll choose the second one.

Check the requirements that an open source project must meet to apply for a free license, and then proceed to fill out the form.

Once all the information has been filled in, you can submit the form. You will then receive an email.

As the email says, your application has been received and will take approximately one week to review. In fact, it did not take that long: three days after I submitted the application, I received an email confirming that it had been approved.

Claiming the License

Open the link in the email, and you will be redirected to JetBrains’ subscription agreement. Simply accept it.

After entering, you will see the license for the order. You can copy the link and give it to anyone, though of course it is generally used by yourself.

Register a JetBrains account using the email address entered during the application, then log in to see that the license has been successfully claimed.

Summary

Simply put, open source project support, like an educational license, is valid for one year. You can apply for renewal before it expires. However, an educational license requires that you are still in school or have not yet graduated, while renewal of open source project support requires that the project is still actively maintained and has had a certain amount of code committed over the past three months.

Overall, open source project support is relatively easy to apply for. The quality of the project’s code is not examined; as long as you keep writing and submitting some code, it is still quite easy to pass the review.