Here is my 2 cents.
Agree or not, this software is structured the way it is. Read the license!
HERE
Did you not do so when you purchased it? So if you want to receive updates to a existing license or upgrade to a new version you must maintain a membership. Which has a cost.
So pay or not. It is up to the user.
I am fine with the way it is now, But I wish it would be something that allows people with a older version to still access the latest updates of the version currently used by the user. Regardless if the membership area has expired.
But it is what it is!

What about bug fixes for a version with out upgrading? UBB doesn't offer that. If there is a bug in one version and they decide not to fix it until the NEXT VERSION and your member access ran out your crap outta luck. No bug fixed product.

Well, if theres a *SECURITY* issue you can get updated copies of the code in the offending files from the support desk (last i had heard); but for bug fixes and feature enhancements you'll have to have valid member are access just like the rest of us... None of us (other than Rick and Dave) work for Groupee, we're all in the same boat and we renew to upgrade like everyone else...

Your missing my point Gizmo, totally.

There have been plenty of times where someone has opened up a support ticket for an older version that has a bug, and I've gone in and fixed that bug even though their members access has expired. If I just wanted everyone to upgrade, I'd just tell them to upgrade and close the ticket.

When someone posts on the forum and they are running something that is a couple versions old, it's usually just the better option to upgrade, since they can potentially fix a couple of the bugs from forum posts, there are usually more that have been addressed, and when we find bugs that are fairly easy to fix we'll post the fix in the forums as well. If our goal was to get everyone to upgrade so we can make more money, then we certainly wouldn't bother posting bug fixes when we can.

We released 7.5.3 which was a bug fix release because there were enough that warranted a bug fix release, even though we were working on 8.0 already. We wouldn't have released that if we were just trying to drag things out so everyone had to renew and upgrade.

There are a couple bugs that currently exist that just require a major change to the code, we certainly aren't going to do that for a maintenance release, those types of bugs are addressed during major releases.

There are some bugs that we've tried to fix multiple times, like the PM flashing indicator. The fixes that we've applied have worked on the majority of installs, but it seems we have a bit more work to do on that one.

We're not trying to suck money out of customers, delay releases so more people have to pay, etc. There are always going to be bugs, we try to address them properly without delaying development.