Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that 3.5 wasn't a shameless money grab. I'm saying that 4e merely grabbed in a shameless but different way, by (as you say) not putting its best foot forward, and releasing a set of core rules that was incomplete and woefully full of errors, and releasing errata and periodic new PHB/DMG/MM triads.
I really can't agree there - mostly for the reason that the errata to the players' books has been released
for free. That's hardly money grabbing. As for the new triads, 2e has a PHB2. And all the content in each new triad has been new (with the sole exception of the spells for the mage class in Essentials). The PHB2 is basically a very good splatbook. And the PHB3 a, in all honesty, poor one. (The PHB3 monk is an awesome class - but I tell people to avoid the Runepriest and Seeker, and outright ban the three power point classes and hybrids).
As for incomplete, what do you mean? That they only had a limited number of classes? And 4e had 25 classes before Essentials?
You seem to have a problem with people judging 4e by those original rules rather than by what's come out since; I'm saying that WotC brought this criticism on themselves by doing things this way (as they did with 3.5 or in any number of other cases).
You seem to be ascribing to conspiracy what I consider to be a cockup. Monster Vault kicks the Monster Manual 1's arse. But I do not believe that at the time the PHB1 was published, the designers were
capable of designing Monster Vault. I don't believe they realised what some of the issues were any more than the designers of 3.0 realised what they'd unleashed on the world with 3.0
Haste.
I guess I'm not seeing the incompatible part. I didn't buy the 3.5 core books in print until after 4e came out, and I played 3.5 that entire time, off the SRD. I mixed tons of 3.0 and 3.5 material. Heck, I'm referring to at least three 3.0 books for the game I'm prepping right now.
Congratulations. You are treating 3.0 the way 2e players often treated 1e. You might as well merge those editions by your math. But the changes made are all over the place - they altered the shape of a horse ffs. (5ft by 10ft to 10ft by 10ft). They changed the skill lists (and detail on about 30 of the skills with things ranging from name changes to near rewrites), a lot of spells, and more. And then there were changes to weapon sizes, DR, spell durations, XP calculation (leading to the XP is a river issue). And I'm missing quite a lot out. WotC of course never released a detailed conversion document.
For that matter, the game I'm preparing I'm using the 1e AD&D DMG, Vornheim, the 2e Undermountain box, the 2e Planescape boxed sets, and the 4e Undermountain book.