[memsom]

You need to remember - 1998, no Windows software was particularly "free". If you wanted to upgrade, you paid. The company I was working for was stuck at Delphi 1 (as the code was 16bit and had an in house 16bit DLL that needed to be replaced and was core to the application.) Some of the other products were on Delphi 2 or 3. Once we reengineered the DLL (it was using pure 16bit assembler to implement a look-up tree in memory, so it took them a while to make a 32bit version), we moved on. I think we were on Delphi 4 by the time I left around 2000.

Next 3 companies I worked for were using Delphi 5, despite Delphi 6, 7 and 8 existing by that point. Same reason - if it isn't broken, you don't need to jump to the next best thing.

Also worth noting - the company I directly worked for after the one above was a Borland partner in the UK and Borland outsourced training and consultancy to them (I was under Borland NDA) and we therefore had access to pretty much all the Borland software (I have a copy of the first Kylix Beta somewhere still I think)