JetBrains has announced that CLion will be available for free for non-commercial use, a move that has been welcomed by many users who have struggled to justify the cost for infrequent projects. This change allows users, especially students and hobbyists, to access a powerful IDE without the financial burden. Some concerns were raised regarding the definition of 'non-commercial' use, potential abuse by small companies, and privacy issues with telemetry data collection from the free version. Additionally, users compared CLion's performance with alternatives like VSCode, reflecting on their experiences with heavy C++ codebases, and the implications of collecting anonymous usage data. Overall, while there is excitement around the free access, there are also critical perspectives on the trade-offs involved, particularly concerning data privacy and performance against competitors.