... and no, this isn't me overreacting because I had a crappy day. This frustration has been building for years.
I read a really great article years ago about culture and motivation in open source projects and how perverse incentives - attracting new community members with new shiny trendy things - not really caring about the existing user-base - causes exactly this kind of pointless upgrade treadmills and wasted engineering effort.
I wish I could find that article again. It was so right.