[ale] Stable, backward compatible APIs

[JD]

On 08/30/2012 09:03 AM, Byron Jeff wrote:
> BTW this is exactly what Miguel discusses in his piece. The bottom line is
> embodied in the saying "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." The
> dichotomy between the Linux developer community, which certainly does not
> consists of little minds, and the general user population, which views most
> technology as an appliance, are almost exclusively so.

Odd, I came away with a completely different view of his statements.

I saw him calling for stable APIs and binary compatibility across distro and
versions.  A GUI program written in 2002 should work and definitely not crash on
an OS in 2012.

I'm not against purchasing software, not at all. However, I am against
purchasing software that only works for 1 or 2 yrs.  THAT is the real issue with
Linux desktops.  3rd party developers can't trust that their efforts will be
rewarded, so they don't even try.

When there is a stable API and binary compatibility going forward, you get ...
huge marketshare.  Just as the Android folks. Look what they accomplished in 5
yrs. Is that really possible if Android would have dropped important APIs with
every major release?  I've run android apps designed for use on v1.6 on 3.x and
4.x devices.  Even if those apps were pretty, they worked.

THAT is what Linux needs on their desktops.  Binary compatibility would be
really nice too, but stable APIs matter much more.