Lens 6 is out and comes with some cool new features, making the IDE even more powerful. Lens is used by more than 650,000 people and thousands of businesses develop and operate their Kubernetes on Lens.
In this article let's look at some of the changes, the main one being the new subscription model, which I believe is a positive step towards fulfilling the needs of the community.
New Subscription Model
Lens is free-to-use software, and the team intends to keep it free. However, there needs to be a way to sustainably develop it. For this reason, the team has switched to the subscription model. Let's look at the changes and see how it affects the community.
Updated ToS
Lens Desktop End User License Agreement and Lens Spaces Terms of Service Agreement with a new master Lens Terms of Service Agreement that covers the use of Lens Desktop and all related services. The new Lens Terms of Service Agreement covers changes to the product subscriptions.
Lens Personal
Lens Personal subscription is for personal use, education, and startups with less than $10 million in annual funding or revenue. If you are working with Kubernetes as a student, or are just learning how to use Lens, then you would use this subscription tier. This is free of cost, so you can use it freely.
Lens Pro
Lens Pro subscription is for cloud-native professionals and is required for those working in larger businesses. It also comes with new and exciting features such as Container Scanning, Desktop Kubernetes, and more.
This is meant for bigger businesses with annual revenue or funding of more than $10 million. If your teams already are using Lens, you will have to switch to the personal, or pro subscription before January 2, 2023.
No Changes to OSS Terms
There are no changes to OpenLens licensing or any other upstream open source projects used by Lens Desktop.
The main thing to keep in mind about the new subscription model is that Lens is still free for personal use, learners, and startups with less than $10 million in revenue or funding using the Lens Personal subscription. Which is amazing! ✨
Lens Desktop Kubernetes
Lens Desktop Kubernetes is a local Kubernetes cluster built directly to Lens Desktop. It provides you with your own personal Kubernetes cluster running on your desktop! As this Cluster is built-in to Lens Desktop, you don't have to install any additional software.
Exception: Windows users will need to use WSL.
Lens Security
Lens Security provides container image scanning and CVE reporting for everybody using Lens Desktop. You can now easily browse through the container images running in your cluster, namespace, deployment, or even pod and spot scan images to immediately see their vulnerabilities.
You can even automate scanning by deploying an operator to secure your inner development loop.
Lens Support
Lens Support is integrated with Lens Desktop and comes with a built-in chat to have a conversation with a Team Lens support engineer making it easy for you to get the answers you need.
Note: Lens Desktop Kubernetes, Lens Security, and Lens Support are included in the Pro subscription.
Some smaller changes
Lens has had some smaller changes as well which are listed below.
- New activation process for Lens Desktop with a Lens ID. Supports both online and offline (air-gapped) use cases.
- The profile icon has been moved to the bottom left corner with information about registration and access to Lens ID.
- Improved auto-update experience for Lens Desktop.
- Renamed “Personal Space” to “Local” in space selector to better describe the context it is used for.
- Connection to Lens Cloud for access to shared spaces is configurable.
- Added support for Kubernetes Priority Classes in the Config section of the Cluster View.
- Upgraded to Electron v15.5.7
- Updated OpenLens to version 6.0.0.
What's to come
As great as Lens already is, the team has no intention to stop here. There are a lot more features planned for improving a cloud-native developer's experience. Here are some of the planned features
- Lens for Browsers: Make Lens usable from a web browser which can be accessed through mobiles and tablets as well.
- Going Beyond Kubernetes: Right now, Lens works with Kubernetes, but the plan is to slowly expand functionalities starting with technologies and use cases that are closet to Kubernetes.
- Make it easy for Lens users to create value: The team plans to have a marketplace where Lens users can easily share or sell their extensions, templates & assets, know-how, and services.