JetBrains actually ended up with this model after a lot of pushback when they tried changing their model a few years ago. But it's good that they listened, and now are even touted as the go-to best-practice.
Users have a perpetual license to the version released when the subscription started and not when it ended. Thus, if you let your subscription expire, you need to downgrade the software you already have installed on your system.
On the surface, it's not that big of a deal. But there's no guarantee that your downgrade will occur gracefully. It could break existing projects which is kinda scary.
Still, you're right that they did walk back some of their initially proposed changed after customers complained. All in all, I like Jetbrains and am happy to support them.
"You will receive perpetual fallback licenses for every version you’ve paid 12 consecutive months for."
https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What...
https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/article_attachments/203511589...
>in the example you link if I continue the subscription for another 4 month I will be able to keep v2.
Well, I never claimed otherwise. But perhaps we can agree to summarize it all in a different way:
At the end of any twelve month (or more) subscription you are are forced to downgrade to a one year old version, regardless of what's been released since.
Agree?
If you want to cancel your subscription you need to pay for an additional year if you want to keep using the version you're currently using.
I'm not sure why JetBrains gets so much praise. Their licensing is objectively worse than when it used to be perpetual licenses with upgrade pricing. It's going to get worse too. I think JetBrains Space is going to get pushed more and it's a subscription lock-in nightmare.
It's very sad to see JetBrains locking their solution for dev environments behind a subscription.