Nobody is getting A7 for free. Conitec has always offered users who bought a previous version a couple months before a new version is released the next version for free. This is a fairly standard practice I've seen at many places.

The mistake in this instance is giving these new users a "pre-release" version of A7. Older users shouldn't get this pre-release because then Conitec would be giving it away for nothing; however there should not have been a pre-release version for non-beta testers period. There should only be a final release version that everyone has access to on day one of official release (new users and upgrade users).