How long do you expect upgrades to work before a break in compatibility?
The difference between 10.4 and 10.8 is seven years. That doesn't seem like an outrageous amount of time to break compatibility.
The difference between 10.4 and 10.8 is seven years. That doesn't seem like an outrageous amount of time to break compatibility.
Forever? At least the linux kernel has an explicit goal of never breaking userspace. That doesn't mean other parts of userspace don't break themselves, but the linux kernel has as a development goal to never break binary compatibility for userspace.
But I still admire the kernel for their stance even if it can't solve every compatibility problem.
Unless you're a large organisation paying a lot of money, you aren't likely to get 5 years of support for a particular version of most products.
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-gb&C2=1173 http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/endofsupport.aspx
Of the new software that still claims XP compatibility, much of it requires SP3.
So actually, XP = XP SP3.