If they treat it like a hobby project there may be a "coolness" factor at play
If they're hiring programmers maybe the programmers want to justify their salaries
Downside of a small company is it's possible to be "done" with the single product that company produces with no ambition to do anything else. If you're the owner and making money that's great because you can "sit on the beach"; if you're an employee it's not.
I'm surprised nobody else mentioned their stated reasoning: They can't easily focus on bugfixes and improvements when there are two codepaths in production simultaneously. They want all sites on a unified style and code, regardless of what that style is.
You are probably right but how do you explain the scored/communities updates? They aren't run by a big company..... Are they? Who the fuck knows.
Possible reasons:
If they treat it like a hobby project there may be a "coolness" factor at play
If they're hiring programmers maybe the programmers want to justify their salaries
Downside of a small company is it's possible to be "done" with the single product that company produces with no ambition to do anything else. If you're the owner and making money that's great because you can "sit on the beach"; if you're an employee it's not.
I'm surprised nobody else mentioned their stated reasoning: They can't easily focus on bugfixes and improvements when there are two codepaths in production simultaneously. They want all sites on a unified style and code, regardless of what that style is.