Charles

Marketplace authors have known about this change for a while now and some are looking to create their own Marketplace-like web site.
It sounds like a promising project and they are welcome to talk about it here.

I can see how you might look at it that way in terms of saving money. But we spent a lot of time, resources, and money in development of those 3 years of features and other clients have an expectation from us.
The only way to make self-hosted viable for the future is to ensure people are paying for the effort put into developing it. Otherwise we really should just get rid of it. If you are not willing to do that, there are cheap or low cost alternatives out there but you don't get the owners of the company replying to you and you most certainly do not get monthly updates and constant improvements. Look at literally any other community platform and you will see many are at worst dead and at best barely supported.
It is also very, very common. I'm not sure where you have been living in 30+ years of the software world. It's very normal for software to require a subscription fee or to require a re-purchase at major versions. I get emails all the time from software I own that says "new version pay up!"
We are not requiring people to re-purchase for v5 as other platforms would. The "catch up" renewals only apply to the monthly option as it is basically a finance version of the annual fee. You may wish to review the new terms in the client area as you seem incorrect here.
We are growing and, if you are actually serious about your community, a few more dollars a year to get a platform that is actually alive must be worth it. If having something that is actively developed is not worth it to you, then your community will probably suffer with another platform.
But, as has been said a lot already in this topic, you don't have to do anything. You can stick right where you are on your current terms.
 
TL;DR: We are committed to our clients using Classic, self-hosted who are committed to their communities being a success. It is a joint venture.
 
And to your examples:
1. Insurance companies actually do charge you more if you have a huge gap in coverage. They see you as a greater risk. Same idea here.
2. Microsoft does not do upgrade fees they just make you buy the new version outright. If you would prefer that, I would be HAPPY to do that as it would make our software cost way more.

Yes, the design will not only look different but the way you do themes will be very different. We're pretty close to starting our public v5 blogs/teasers.

Yes, the design will not only look different but the way you do themes will be very different. We're pretty close to starting our public v5 blogs/teasers.

Luckily we are the experts in seeing usage trends 😉
Trust me. You have no idea how many problematic things we prevented from being published in the Marketplace over the years.
PSA: you might want to use multi-quote when doing many replies 🙂 

We did that three years ago in a genuine attempt to increase sales and viability. It helped for a short while but the trend didn’t hold. 

The best way to kill a community is to refuse to keep up with new ways that people consume content.

Luckily we are the experts in seeing usage trends 😉
Trust me. You have no idea how many problematic things we prevented from being published in the Marketplace over the years.
PSA: you might want to use multi-quote when doing many replies 🙂 

I hear you 100% but we are not the arbiters of human habits, we just respond to them.
There are loads of old forums still busy but the bulk of those members and that content was generated a decade ago and they are kept alive by an older member base and probably good authority with Google bringing people in for short transactional exchanges.
We have a responsibility to you and our other customers to keep driving forward, it is pretty relentless. The worst thing we could do is just continue doing the same things and we lose marketshare and your community stagnates and goes into a slow decline.
Communities are more complex than a basic forum and very few have the patience to click loads of links in the hopes of having good content to read.
v5 will help with transactional content (I need an answer to this problem) and more social content (Lets discuss Thing) as well as content discovery.

The best way to kill a community is to refuse to keep up with new ways that people consume content.

v5 is a significant step forward for UI, discovery, noise versus signal and brand matching. Change is hard but it is kind of inevitable.
If nothing changed, then we'd still be using this:

And while you could absolutely run a successful community on that product even now, the chances of attracting new members would be low given the expectations modern audiences have for UI and ease of use.

The best way to kill a community is to refuse to keep up with new ways that people consume content.

The best way to kill a community is to refuse to keep up with new ways that people consume content.

The best way to kill a community is to refuse to keep up with new ways that people consume content.

Yes, the design will not only look different but the way you do themes will be very different. We're pretty close to starting our public v5 blogs/teasers.

Yes, the design will not only look different but the way you do themes will be very different. We're pretty close to starting our public v5 blogs/teasers.

Yes, the design will not only look different but the way you do themes will be very different. We're pretty close to starting our public v5 blogs/teasers.

Luckily we are the experts in seeing usage trends 😉
Trust me. You have no idea how many problematic things we prevented from being published in the Marketplace over the years.
PSA: you might want to use multi-quote when doing many replies 🙂 

Luckily we are the experts in seeing usage trends 😉
Trust me. You have no idea how many problematic things we prevented from being published in the Marketplace over the years.
PSA: you might want to use multi-quote when doing many replies 🙂 

Luckily we are the experts in seeing usage trends 😉
Trust me. You have no idea how many problematic things we prevented from being published in the Marketplace over the years.
PSA: you might want to use multi-quote when doing many replies 🙂 

Luckily we are the experts in seeing usage trends 😉
Trust me. You have no idea how many problematic things we prevented from being published in the Marketplace over the years.
PSA: you might want to use multi-quote when doing many replies 🙂 

Luckily we are the experts in seeing usage trends 😉
Trust me. You have no idea how many problematic things we prevented from being published in the Marketplace over the years.
PSA: you might want to use multi-quote when doing many replies 🙂 

Luckily we are the experts in seeing usage trends 😉
Trust me. You have no idea how many problematic things we prevented from being published in the Marketplace over the years.
PSA: you might want to use multi-quote when doing many replies 🙂 

We cannot just give out the code as it's not our code to give out - it's the author's code - so you would need to transfer your proof of purchase to them. It takes 2 minutes not 6 months to transfer your purchase 🙂 

I respect your unique viewpoint but I am afraid I do not see that in practice 🙂 
We have many enterprise clients on our platform and they specifically do not want anything third-party. They see it as a security risk. When I speak to prospective clients they never ask about such things.
In fact, most enterprise clients specifically disallow any outsourcing or external code being added to their community setups in the contracts we have with them.
We get people switching to use from Discourse all the time. Again, I can see how you might see it that way in your specific case but, on a broader scale, it is just not what we experience.