> It would be very interesting to know how many of those users has JetBrains actually managed to monetize on.

> developer tools, a very niche market

Overall yes, but on GNU/Linux, most users are still some kind of a developer.

I don't have numbers, but JetBrains did say that most users of their products use the paid version and that their Linux business is a healthy one. I am on Linux and subscribe to all their products and have colleagues and friends that do too, so we do exist.

I also paid for Githost.io when I was using GitLab.

In all fairness, developers have always mostly been allergic to paying for things. Even way back, when a lot of developer tools were proprietary and often had pretty significant price tags associated with them, the developer tools business was always a pretty tough one. Like open source software, the model generally worked best when the developer tools were effectively in support of some other part of the business. (Microsoft is a great example.)