Apologies to people who have no interest in publishing except reading books, but obviously I am part of the industry. I've thought about writing a blog post on the topic, but it is so complicated and contentious these days... I haven't.
However, author Michael J. Sullivan just cut through a lot of the bull shite on his blog and did it much better than I think that I can. So if you're interested in why so many authors and publishers are in such a lather, I suggest reading his blog post:
It's well written and informative. And for those not interested in publishing, I have a post on sword fighting coming up in a few days.