Yes, this is exactly the wrong reply I often hear when complaining about backwards compatibility.
The mistake here is that in 99% of cases backwards compatibility costs noting - no efforts, no complexity.
Of two equally costing choices the people breaking backwards compatibility just make a wrong choice.
> maybe the biggest priority to keep your project moving at all
When you rename function SSLeay to OpenSSL_version_num, where are you moving? What does it give to your project?
Ok, if you like the new name so much, what prevents you from keeping the old symbol available?
unsigned long (*SSLeay)(void) = OpenSSL_version_num
(Sorry for naming OpenSSL here, it's just one of many examples)
When developers do such things, they break other open source libraries, which in turn break other. It's a huge destructive effect on the ecosystem. It will take many man-days of work for the dependent systems to recover. And it may take years for the maintainers to find those free days to spend on recovery, and some projects will never recover (e.g. no active maintainer).
With a lift of a finger you can save humanity from significant pain and efforts. If you decided to spend your efforts on open source, keeping backwards compatibility by making the right choice in a trivial situation will make you contribution an order of magnitude bigger, efficient.
So, I believe people don't know what they are doing when they introduce breaking changes.
I saw developers introducing breaking changes, then finding projects depending on them and submitting patches. So they really have good intentions and spend more their volunteer open source energy than necessary. And when the other project can not review and merge their patch (no maintainers) they get disappointed.
So please, just keep the old function name. It will be cheaper for you and for everyone.
The mistake here is that in 99% of cases backwards compatibility costs noting - no efforts, no complexity.
Of two equally costing choices the people breaking backwards compatibility just make a wrong choice.
> maybe the biggest priority to keep your project moving at all
When you rename function SSLeay to OpenSSL_version_num, where are you moving? What does it give to your project?
Ok, if you like the new name so much, what prevents you from keeping the old symbol available?
(Sorry for naming OpenSSL here, it's just one of many examples)When developers do such things, they break other open source libraries, which in turn break other. It's a huge destructive effect on the ecosystem. It will take many man-days of work for the dependent systems to recover. And it may take years for the maintainers to find those free days to spend on recovery, and some projects will never recover (e.g. no active maintainer).
With a lift of a finger you can save humanity from significant pain and efforts. If you decided to spend your efforts on open source, keeping backwards compatibility by making the right choice in a trivial situation will make you contribution an order of magnitude bigger, efficient.
So, I believe people don't know what they are doing when they introduce breaking changes.