The main reason for the discount is that I've been receiving an increasing number of emails from users asking whether they can register for less since they can't afford the normal amount. It's taken me a while to get around to it (apologies to those who have emailed me about a discount in the past!) but I eventually created the pages/scripts/etc. a few weeks ago to be able to handle discounts specifically for these users.
As for IRC's future - every few years, someone comes onto the mIRC forums and posts a message declaring that IRC is on the verge of extinction - this has been happening as far back as I can remember. While it's exceedingly likely that if someone returns to the forums and proclaims the same message once every few years they will eventually be right - I don't think we're quite there yet ;-)
I'm not sure how qualified I am to discuss where IRC is headed or where it should go - I've rarely had the time to think about it - for the last fourteen years I've mainly been juggling time between adding features, fixing bugs, and replying to emails, ie. trying to make mIRC a useful, stable, and fun IRC client. I can tell you one thing - I've purposefully avoided adding technologies that would turn mIRC into something more than an IRC client. At least, so far - at some point it will make sense to consider technologies that allow IRC to change direction and evolve.
I'm currently working on converting mIRC to a full unicode application - which has turned out to be a fairly difficult and time-consuming process. Hopefully IRC will still be around by the time I've finished - I'll be pretty miffed if it isn't ;-)
