@Kevinjohn Gallagher - Developers don't understand regular users, and to make things worse, most of the developers even refuse to acknowledge the regular users point of view. I know that, because I did same thing while I worked with my previous company. Since I started my own business, I look at things differently, I develop for my clients and users, and I can't simply decide to drop support for a WP version without discussing it with end-users.

I too had similar experiences with my clients, and most of them didn't find any reason for upgrading to new WP versions after 3.0. Few updated to 3.2 because website depended on post types, and some of the improvements in WP 3.2 are directly related to that. Upgrading is not easy for most users. In some cases companies would like to run tests for the new system for few months even before using it. By the time they run tests on WP 3.2, WP 3.3 is almost released. Current WP development cycle is too fast, and I know that people running the WP core development don't agree with that, but one major version each year would be much better solution for all, including those same developers. Adoption rate would be much better, and versions much stable if given more time to test and develop. I don't remember a single WP version in the past 3 years that was released as planned, every one was 1 to 3 months late, proving that even the smaller features set is not simple to develop.

I hate to see users abandoning WordPress (I don't see that happening, really), but current version fragmentation is case and point to the fact that vast majority of WordPress users don't agree with current development and release policy.