The basic problem is that the only software which isn't being upgrades is abandoned software. Otherwise, people are fixing problems and making improvments.

So, I suspect the real problem for you isn't that you had to upgrade, but that you had to pay for upgrades. Am I right?

That's probably the primary argument that would sway me to run a BSD or Linux instead of MacOS - to be able to afford to keep up to date.

I'm not even able to afford the Mac hardware - the macs I have are all ancient hand-me-downs. None of them right now are even PowerPCs (I don't think). About the only PPC hand-me-down I would expect to get is something so old, and so slow, that even Linux would crawl.

Given that things are so bad, the issue then becomes this - on what platform do I expect that, if I were able to run it, I could afford to keep the applications on it up to date, or to fix them.

Certainly a good portion of MacOS X apps are available in source form, so I could keep those up to date. However, when it comes to management software, the cost of buying upgrades would be prohibitive to me.