great, they do this for LR so they can do that for another product (say PS/ACR)... because they already have everything in place... and then whether you call a piece of code a new feature, a bug fixing or a routine maintenance is purely game of words and is up to the company... for example supporting a non traditional CFA... you call it a routine maintenance, I call it a new feature...
Don't jump that far - you're heading over to Enron territory. It's certainly not a game of words or up to the company! There are a mass of legal restrictions, the auditors to convince, the tax authorities, investors etc. You'd be expected to disclose deviations from existing policy to the auditors, for example, and the bigger their financial impact, the louder the alarm bells and the tougher the questions. But that said, it's simplistic to say that the revenue recognition policies stopped them moving to as-ready feature releases within a perpetual licence model. They would have been compelled to significantly change their policies and compliance systems/culture to reflect the reshaped business. For a single product that isn't easy, while for a big chunk of your product range it would have been costly and tortuous, and it would have been one argument against as-ready releases while continuing perpetual licences. But one argument, and only if they had ever wanted to go that way.
Sorry if that's convoluted. There's a lot of grey between your "simple as that" and Jeff's original "they were prevented", and the truth is close to the "huge difficulties" that he talks about now.