IMHO the &quot;dipping toes&quot; was the switch to the current model, which they did 4 or 5 years ago. It was a <i>clear</i> attempt at moving from shrinkwrap to SaaS. The constant stream of reminders in-product, on blogs, twitter etc was a strong hint that they&#x27;d <i>really</i> like you to pay something every few months. They were much more forceful than the average software vendor. This is why I wasn&#x27;t really surprised by recent news.<p>As a hobbyist developer (I use PyCharm with a personal license, but I don&#x27;t actually sell anything), I&#x27;m basically in the &quot;screwed&quot; camp. I thought it was about time for me to upgrade, but now I&#x27;ll just keep using my current copy forever. I&#x27;m sad, because the tool is great; but stopping it from working when the license expires, rather than just disabling updates, is really a low blow. It signals that they don&#x27;t think their upgrades are worth paying for (which in some cases is absolutely true, a lot of recently introduced PyCharm features are of no use to me whatsoever), and that they&#x27;ve stopped innovating and are now just rent-seeking.