The best way to establish such a relationship is to first give away without charge whatever is soon to be worthless anyway. However, this is not so much different from the car dealer giving away free candy in order to lure customers into his showroom. From the seller's point of view, the relationship is kept up by a small but steady stream of money bleeding in tiny drops slowly but steadily into his pockets. From the buyers point of view, the relationship is the life line that maintains the value of her previous investment. At a certain point, one can no longer afford the extra time to continually search for and install alternative free versions which might be out there, somewhere, untested, or wait for the soon to be outdated illegal copy of the upgrade to appear for free on the Net.
New technologies change the patterns of the commercial game.
So obvious, but so true. Selling a car in Kansas City and selling software on the Internet are very different things indeed. However, this does not change the goal of the game, namely, the allocation of money through the allocation of power, or, for the more politically minded, vice versa. This is not bad in itself.