If Khaled was really intent on trying to FORCE people to pay for mIRC immediately, he would have made mIRC into crippleware (i.e. the program would disable after expiration of the trial period). The fact that he has not done this says a lot about him.
mIRC has been shareware for years. The more recent versions just make it a little more difficult to ignore that fact. Nobody with a clear conscience should be upset by the nag screen.
Nobody is *forced* to upgrade mIRC, and clever people have made scripts available for dealing with the exploit on older versions. Equally, nobody is forced to use mIRC at all - there are lots of other clients out there.
To suggest that an exploit was deliberately introduced or left in makes no sense. There is a risk in every new version that people will dislike the changes so much they abandon mIRC for a new client, or decide not to register it. So why take the unnecessary risk?
PastMaster
