I mean, if you buy software and expect 0 updates afterwards I guess that’s fair
I mean honestly, the old model was kind of dope. You pay a fairly high price for the software. Updates for that version are free. When they come out with enough new features to release a new milestone version you got to choose whether you upgrade to the milestone or stay on your existing version. True critical security patches were released for At least the last couple of versions.
But you get to decide when the features warrant you buying again. You got to choose with your wallet and the companies had to deal with that.
If they would have put a bunch of crap in about having the rights to AI scrape all of your content in the old version people would have just said fuck it I’m not upgrading it. But as it stands, if you don’t like it you have to not use the software at all.
If you buy software at a version point, (vs the subscription model), why would you expect an update for it? Particularly for free? You chose to buy at a frozen point.
That model always had the tacit agreement that the company releases early, and the users accept that they are part of a large testing base with one or two major updates to come. Further to this, continued support in the early life drives more sales. There’s a spectrum of users from bleeding edge to 4 versions behind. Some will hold out and never upgrade if key bugs remain, so updates make business sense. Software of this complexity has to be this way to strike a balance to move new features forward.