>I never quite understood what makes people that make 100's of thousands of dollars per year so cheap that they would balk at paying a few hundred $ for their m

>I never quite understood what makes people that make 100's of thousands of dollars per year so cheap that they would balk at paying a few hundred $ for their main tool of choice. 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's not true everywhere. Besides, the main complaint I see here is that the subscription model makes all your code assets hostage to JetBrains' 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.