Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure why you make that assumption. X+2 is going to be bought both by users happy with x+1 and by new users who only just learned about it. Why would that be lower than the original buyers?

> You can stay on Windows XP to avoid that, would you?

People do. But realistically either you'd upgrade your computer since XP was sold and get a new license included, or just pay for the update once in almost 2 decades. I don't get the issue you're trying to point out.

There are other and more important motivators in the world than money…

It is of course necessary to make ends meet and plenty of software shops do just fine with the business model of making a good product and charge for upgrades.

Not true, some things need to be updated with the OS, like Parallels.