Dear Bob ...In your column on progress ("A progressive view of IT," Keep the Joint Running, 6/23/2008) you said, "I've worked with quite a few companies that avoid application upgrades in much the way campers avoid rabid badgers, although with less justification," and in general wrote in favor of companies staying current with vendor upgrades.You forget that for some vendors an upgrade is just a revenue stream. Dear Bob …In your column on progress (“A progressive view of IT,” Keep the Joint Running, 6/23/2008) you said, “I’ve worked with quite a few companies that avoid application upgrades in much the way campers avoid rabid badgers, although with less justification,” and in general wrote in favor of companies staying current with vendor upgrades.You forget that for some vendors an upgrade is just a revenue stream. No real benefit received. – Skeptical on the subjectDear Skeptic …Except for the completely disreputable vendors, even upgrades that deliver no real benefit are more than just revenue streams. Whether the changes they put into the software are useful has little or no correlation with the cost and effort needed to develop them. I strongly suspect the issue isn’t as nefarious as you state. It’s more a matter of a lack of good ideas than the lack of good intentions. After all, since putting useful features and useless features into a product takes roughly the same amount of work, why would a vendor deliberately choose the latter?– Bob Technology Industry