Can I change my vote? No, leave it. OK, change it. Never mind, I think I'm confused.
Here's what I want... I like the UltraEdit model. You buy the program at whatever version it is at that time and you get free updates, major or minor, for one year. After that year, you get minor version updates and bugfixes.
So for instance, if I bought TCC 13 today (March 1) and version 14 came out in October, I'd get a free upgrade. If version 15 came out next February, I'd get a free upgrade to 15. After March 1 next year, my "subscription" expires and I'd keep getting minor updates to version 15, but would have to upgrade to get version 16.
Another for instance, if I bought TCC 13 today (March 1) and there were only point upgrades (13.1.64, 13.2.98, 13.3.105, 13.4.155) until April of next year when version 14 came out, I'd have to pay to upgrade to version 14.
I guess you could consider this a combination of option 1 and option 3.