Well to be fair, for most software it was the major releases that were paid, and the minor ones were given free, on the understanding that these ~never contained functionality changes, additions or reworks.

So 3.1 was purely a bugfix for 3.0, for example. Hence you got it free. Often when 4.0 came out (which you had to pay to get) there’s also a be a 3.2 update that served as the “final” rleease of that branch. Any bugs in it now are there to stay.

And yeah. Although, I feel in a way that’s what we got here, no? If I paid for these I can turn updates off and use the version I bought, so to speak.