&gt;I never quite understood what makes people that make 100&#x27;s of thousands of dollars per year so cheap that they would balk at paying a few hundred $ for their main tool of choice.<p>You make an assumption that we developers make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. That may be true in some places and for some fortunate people but it&#x27;s not true everywhere.<p>Besides, the main complaint I see here is that the subscription model makes all your code assets hostage to JetBrains&#x27; fortunes, since the moment they go out of existence all the software you depend on stops working. People are not balking at the thought of paying a few hundred dollars for a tool - they are, in fact, asking for the opportunity to do just that.