Every Idea product I've used, with the exception of Rubymine 3.0, has been top notch. PHPStorm, ReSharper and IntelliJ are great. Some times there are benefits to having a small closed source, private paid team of professionals writing software. Some times it's beneficial to opening it up to the whole world and saying "what do you want to see added?"
I don't think anyone's disputing the quality of the products, Idea's ItelliJ, Microsoft's Visual Studio, ST2 - they're all quality software.
I just wanted to pick a bone with something you said though:
>> Some times there are benefits to having a small closed source, private paid team of professionals writing software
This is a comment about development methodology - the Cathedral and the Bazaar. Take out the words "closed source" (e.g. think Chromium browser) which have no baring on your statement, and then i agree.
