>Software is never really finished
Tell that to my grandmother’s rock solid install of MS Word 2010 that she still uses. It’s okay for businesses to want more money, but people didn’t forget how reliable software was just 10-12 years ago.
> Software is never really finished and often has to be hosted and maintained on an ongoing basis.
I have no problem paying for updates, as long as the product would keep working without an active subscription (what happens if there’s no connectivity, servers are down, the provider goes bakrupt or change its terms?)
That is one great thing about how Jetbrains monetizes. You "subscribe" for a year of some IDE and after a year's worth of subscriptions you keep the 20xx version that you subscribed to. So you can use 20xx as a standalone or subscribe so that you get updates for 20xx + 1.
An ongoing stream of smaller payments just seems like a natural way of paying for an ongoing service, even if the benefits are weighted to the vendor.