So it's opt-in for your paying customers, the ones that would cause the biggest damage if you piss them off because you know exactly that this is not something people want.
No, it's not. This change doesn't affect any of paying customers. Non-commercial is a special type of license provided for free for non-commercial projects (education, hobby programming, etc.), for a limited set of JetBrains products.
That's what he said, you aren't applying this change to your paying customers because you know what a shitty decision it is and only free users will put up with it.
free users get the same value as paying customers...JetBrains can do as they please to get some value out of these users. Don't like it, pay up...I'm a long time JetBrains customer (since 2005). I've never asked my employer to pay for my licenses because their tools make me a better developer than any other options on the market.