Y U NO DO THIS IN APRIL?

;-)

Fuck everybody on an old version. This is how you do it. Trying to be nice only leads to assholes taking advantage of it. USe the heavy hand, let there be short-term complaining and gnashing of teeth, move forward a month later and it's all fine.

Sometimes the only way to adjust a bitch's attitude is to fuck her in the butt and throw her out. It's not nice, and you might not like yourself for doing it, but the shittiest of people, like you find in the cesspool that is crypto, just can't be handled any other way. Sometimes you have to do an ugly thing because it's the only thing that will work. It sucks, but a man does what is needed even if it's ugly.

ALSO

Once open sourced, people could modify the code to report false version numbers. It would expose these operators as deliberately black hatting it. They would be the only non-payers and would shame themselves beyond recourse.