Good call! That's changed then since I last looked at the license (probably about four years ago or so when I purchased version 2 and version 3 was going to be the paid upgrade).
So they dodged my point two. I hope they don't amplify point 1 with that move.
[Update] Actually, this is not fully correct in regard to my point. I re-read your link and this is the key bits.
"Until such time, upgrading is not required, as Sublime Text 3 will accept Sublime Text 2 license keys during the beta period. [...] For customers who purchased in the 90 days prior to the announcement of Sublime Text 3 [Jan 2013], we are reducing the cost of upgrading from $15 down to $11. Customers who purchased Sublime Text 2 before this time period are still subject to a $30 upgrade fee when 3.0 is released."
So version 2 subscribers are not automatically grandfathered into version 3; there is a class of version 2 users that are, but not all. Apparently there is a time at which they considered licensing to be version 3. http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/upgrades.
So for example, I bought a version 2 license in 2012, have been using version 3 since 2013... an automatic update to a full release version would force the update issue.
Using web.archive.org, it looks like licenses have counted as version 3 licenses since April of 2013[1]. So I guess licenses purchased before that are for version <=2 like you said. At least it isn't as bad as you'd thought.
So they dodged my point two. I hope they don't amplify point 1 with that move.
[Update] Actually, this is not fully correct in regard to my point. I re-read your link and this is the key bits.
"Until such time, upgrading is not required, as Sublime Text 3 will accept Sublime Text 2 license keys during the beta period. [...] For customers who purchased in the 90 days prior to the announcement of Sublime Text 3 [Jan 2013], we are reducing the cost of upgrading from $15 down to $11. Customers who purchased Sublime Text 2 before this time period are still subject to a $30 upgrade fee when 3.0 is released."
So version 2 subscribers are not automatically grandfathered into version 3; there is a class of version 2 users that are, but not all. Apparently there is a time at which they considered licensing to be version 3. http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/upgrades.
So for example, I bought a version 2 license in 2012, have been using version 3 since 2013... an automatic update to a full release version would force the update issue.