I'm sorry, but do you know anything about what Khaled does in the background? Do you speak to him personally, are you aware of every aspect of his personal life? If not, how can you claim what you just said?
He only worked hard in the mid-90s? Well that's weird, because mIRC was only born in the mid-90s, and it's quite obvious he's worked on it quite a bit since then otherwise it wouldn't really have become popular. Multi-server support was only added in 2002, and the last major release of mIRC was 2003, and the last release of mIRC in general was 2004. Despite there not being another version so far, the mIRC homepage is still updated as is servers.ini, there have been no announcements that mIRC's development has ceased - so, as far as I see, there is little to suggest Khaled has given up on mIRC and just sits with a pina colada watching the money roll in.
What I do know, and yes, I can tell you personally, is Khaled is not the type of man to make fools of people or cheat people out of money or anything else for that matter. He doesn't lie to anyone about his stance on mIRC, and although, yes, people do pay their earned money towards mIRC, he does have a life to lead like everyone else, and his goals/aims in life should not be hindered forever by the development of an IRC client.
I'm sure Khaled is perfectly aware of the "competition" to his client, and realises that other clients are in very active development. Most of those clients are mentioned on this very website, no attempt is made to cover them up as alternatives. And actually, I've spoken to several authors of other major IRC clients, all of whom realise that mIRC is a good IRC client, that a lot of hard work has been and is put into it, and are not trying to go to war with mIRC, but just feel that their clients can be better as far as their concerned. There's nothing wrong with that, is there? It doesn't make either client a bad one as far as I can see.
Let's not start making wild assumptions and spawning rumours, although, that said, I was surprised it took this long for them to be posted
Regards,