Comment by shagie

Jetbrains originally had a "buy upgrade model". You paid full price for the first one, and then it was half price for upgrades beyond that.

To Jetbrains, this had the problem of feast or famine and the non-predictable income. They'd need to release an upgrade when they needed money and they would hold off on releasing features as a minor release so that they could justify an upgrade later.

At some point (I want to say 2014 based on my licensing), they trial ballooned a subscription only model and got some extreme pushback about it. With that feed/pushback Jetbrains went to the perpetual fallback and subscription. It addresses the subscription issue - they now have a revenue stream rather than the upgrade. It also means that they do a lot of minor releases now with new features throughout the year.

The other part of the perpetual fallback is that if you have a subscription to a version for a year, you will always be able to use that version even if you cancel your subscription. If I canceled my subscription, I'd be able to use IntelliJ 2024.2 forever. I'm currently running 2024.3.3

One other bit on the subscription - it gets less expensive each year. I've got an all products pack for single user. My next yearly billing will be $173.00. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21798033