The very specific requirement of doing exactly the same thing you could do for a fraction of the price the year earlier: manage issues? Running software is not some exotic requirement.
> Running software is not some exotic requirement.
But running software in an environment you don't control, but where it's expected to run perfectly or else you're on the hook for the support, that is. On-prem services are hard to get right, there's all sorts of issues around things like upgrades, software versions, etc.
I get that it used to do this, but software gets updated and moves on. I think it's reasonable to expect that you can remain on an outdated version and old pricing scheme, but give up support after some period of time, but I could also understand companies not wanting to offer that.
The on-prem requirement; probably most paying users with that requirement are not very price sensitive, since it's a regulatory requirement on them, or similar. They're also probably typically large orgs (so it doesn't look so expensive per user, if they would even consider it in those terms), and resistant to switching providers due to other requirements/processes anyway.
And that sucks, I do understand, I just don't think Atlassian will feel the loss, and stands to gain far more by jacking the price for the price insensitive customers who remain, as above.