Comment by sytelus

This is a terrible terrible business model despite good intentions. Let me explain... Vast majority of developers who can pay are living in corporate world where you need to approve expenses each time charge is made. Subscription model is especially bad in that world because PO approvals for subscriptions are usually very hard, at least requiring additional justifications + process barriers. Most folks would just rather not do it or find alternatives. I've seen this first hand even when folks are very fond of product.

A far better licencing model is to have one time charge and free upgrades for a year followed by nagging that can be turned off. This would have exact same effect but much easier to have purchase orders pass throughs in big company rule books.

JetBrains have far more potential than $270M. One of the easiest thing they can do is to allow users in same companies to form user groups on their website. They can then approach those companies to buy site licenses with list of all these supportive users at those companies. They can then evangelize to users within same companies who are not yet using their products. This would make sure their subscription churn is lowered due to individual developers.