It is becoming harder and harder to find backwards compatibility for binary interfaces even in the open source world, where libraries move so fast and finding old versions of libraries is becoming more and more of a pain. If you dynamically linked against something 10 years from now unless you kept all of those libraries around, and their supporting files the program won't run anymore.
Backwards compatibility in Windows definitely made Microsoft a dominant market force, but it has also led to the Win32 API stagnating, and it becoming increasingly more fragile as time goes on. Also in all the old code paths, all those not often taken branches there are various bugs just waiting to be found and to be exploited. Yes it has gotten much better, but still.
Backwards compatibility in Windows definitely made Microsoft a dominant market force, but it has also led to the Win32 API stagnating, and it becoming increasingly more fragile as time goes on. Also in all the old code paths, all those not often taken branches there are various bugs just waiting to be found and to be exploited. Yes it has gotten much better, but still.