Following on the heels of their 2024 release of free versions of their Rider and WebStorm IDEs, JetBrains have announced a new free version of the popular C/C++ IDE CLion. This new version is free for all non-commercial projects and should make it easier for people to access their tools. Details from the announcement blog: What’s happening? Last year we implemented a new licensing model for RustRover, Rider, and WebStorm, making them free for non-commercial use. We’re now extending this model to CLion. If you’re using it for non-commercial purposes, such as learning, open-source project development, content creation, or hobby development, you can now do so for free. For commercial use, our existing licensing model still applies. Note that while CLion now joins RustRover, Rider, and WebStorm in being free for non-commercial use, this update doesn’t apply to other JetBrains IDEs at this time. We’re keeping an eye on how things go and will continue evaluating the impact of this initiative. Why are we doing this? In making non-commercial development free, we aim to make JetBrains IDEs more accessible to a broader audience. We hope the new licensing model will further lower the barrier to using our IDEs, helping you learn, grow, and stay creative. You can find more details about why we’re introducing this update in the blog post making the original announcement. Why CLion? C++ is powerful, but it’s not exactly known for being easy or forgiving. And then there’s C – lean, low-level, and still a core part of many computer science curricula. Whether you’re learning these languages, diving into systems programming, or exploring embedded development on your own, C and C++ often come with a steep learning curve. We want to support that journey. With CLion now free for non-commercial use, it’s easier for you to experiment, learn, and build – without worrying about the IDE license. In additionally JetBrains news, they also recently announced the open sourcing of Mellum, a purpose built LLM for developers that provides code completion support for several programming languages (Java, Kotlin, Python, Go, PHP, C, C++, C#, JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS, HTML, Rust, Ruby). In terms of why they open sourced Mellum: Why open-source Mellum? This question was the subject of a big internal discussion. Mellum is not just a fine-tuned version of an open-source model. It’s a model we trained from scratch to power cloud-based code completion in JetBrains IDEs, and it was released to the public last year. It’s also the first in a planned family of code-specialized models. So why open-source it? Because we believe in transparency, collaboration, and the power of shared progress. From Linux and Git to Node.js and Docker, open source has driven some of the biggest leaps in technology. With open-source LLMs now outperforming some industry leaders, it’s reasonable to assume that AI’s general evolution might follow a similar trajectory. Mellum isn’t a plug-and-play solution. By releasing it on Hugging Face, we are offering researchers, educators, and advanced teams the opportunity to explore how a purpose-built model works under the hood.  Key Links CLion Free Release Announcement CLion Homepage Mellum LLM Open-Sourced Announcement You can learn more about the new free version of the CLion C++ IDE and about the open sourcing of Mellum in the video below.