re his suggestions:

#1, is doable, but Apple probably will never do it. Why buy the cow when developer will submit updates for free?

#2, link tracking, will never happen. That's a whole can of worms (privacy advocates, etc) they don't want to open.

And so the cycle will only continue: developers build up product/skillset to a certain point, get bought out. The users complain, believing that by spending a few bucks on an app they should get ponies for life. Sorry, it doesn't work that way.