Thanks very much for the background. And thanks for the link to the licensing of XI. Using X right now, I have no reason to upgrade yet.
I'm not complaining, however, as software providers move in this direction, it will force us, that only upgrade to stay compatible, into a different space.
I'd be curious how larger enterprises are reacting. I was an IT exec in a DOW company before I retired a decade or so ago. It was not unusual for us to choose to skip releases, even major ones, for both cost and risk reasons. Usually that applied to our line-of-business applications, but it sometimes included more general purpose utilities.