But previous model catered for that: you buy a tool and x months of developers' work. If you want to buy more work (updates) you pay again. The incentives are nicely aligned here.
With the rental model they aren't because you will have to pay for 20 years even if they stop developing the software.
This trend is disturbing. It really is similar to not being able to buy an apartment, a car or a kitchen knife.
With all the goods I want to pay you for your service/time/offering and then maybe pay again if I like what you provide and want more of it. I don't want a financial relationship with you when just because I bought something you made I need to keep paying for it even though you don't need to work on it anymore.
What's next? Laptop as a service where you get upgrades every year but if you don't pay up they take it away from you?
You are confusing an subscription-based IDE with software-as-a-service.
Do you even use IntelliJ? You don't lose anything except access to the IDE. You can always switch to Eclipse if you don't want to pay. You lose NOTHING except the convenience and power of IntellJ, which is why you pay for them.
If the loss of access to IntelliJ is not a large one, then why would one ever pay to use it? :)
I, and many others in this thread, are happy to pay for a perpetual license to a particular version of software. We are also happy to pay for future versions of that software, if future versions are even vaguely worth paying for. We are not happy with making rented software that contains a built-in killswitch a critical part of how we get our work done. [0]
[0] kileywm found some JetBrains FAQ answers that indicate that if your license cannot be verified for 30 days, or your license payment is 30 days overdue, JetBrains's software will refuse to function: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10171998
IDE's have their own learning curve. We invest time in learning IDE software in order to be more productive. When we lose access to IntelliJ the knowledge we gained is worth significantly less than it was and now we have to go and spend time learning another IDE. We are also now less productive so we spend more time working to make up the difference. Time is money.
Renting computers has always been pretty popular at the enterprise level. I believe there are a few steps trying to bring that model into the consumer market.
If they expect to paid well; they should make software worth buying and price it properly. In the subscription model, they're still (likely) under-pricing but now they don't have to keep with features and innovations -- because if they do nothing, and you don't pay, you lose access to everything you had before.
>they should make software worth buying and price it properly
They do make software worth buying, and I have already stated that I believe it is priced properly NOW.
Wrong. You don't lose access to your files, your code, your data. You only lose access to the IDE. If they stop innovating, the great thing about this model is that you can leave immediately to another competitor that likely is copying all their feature.
How is this a defense of this model from the customers perspective? In the old pricing model, if they stop innovating I can just stop paying for it and stay with the version I have. This is good for me. And I have actually done this -- I own PHPStorm and while I've bought a yearly upgrades in the past this last year I did not. I'm not doing as much PHP work and most of my PHP work is legacy. Thankfully I own PHPStorm instead of renting it for almost the same price.
With this new model, I wouldn't be happily moving to another competitor, I'd be forced into it immediately. I would paying nearly the same amount but instead I don't own anything.
Big company sees Jetbrains income / username; buys Jetbrains. Decides to cut costs, lets a few devs go. Income doesn't change but profit rises. Let a few more devs go. Switch to minimum viable development model. Customers are locked in to access their work, don't really care about updates because they already like the product. Gradually customers drift away. Not enough revenue for minimum viable product, close it down. All customers can't access files "too bad".
And it's not just bugfix updates, it's new features and innovations.