GTK Ticked-Off

[Kurt Wall]

Quoth Collins Richey:
> On 07 Sep 2003 10:08:51 -0400
> burns <linux at burnsmacdonald.com> wrote:
> 
> > Bulletin for these morons: backwards compatiblity *is* a best practise
> > and development objective.
> > </rant>
> 
> Maybe you should widen your field of vision.  Almost everything in the
> open software arena is done this way - glibc, kernel, qt, kde, gnome. 
> The few closed source vendors (ex. Realplay) who choose to offer their
> product for linux fight this battle every day.  The only reason I can
> still use Realplay is that Mozilla offers binaries and gentoo offers a
> compatability library series that allows use of the older glibc/gcc
> combination.
> 
> GTK is just following the established path, miserable as it may be.
> 
> Yes, in an ideal world there would be a stable API for everything, and
> new versions would not be a big problem.  Pigs will fly first.

In the interests of equal time, "the rules" allow breaking compatibility
between major revisions, and the jump from 1.x to 2.x certainly qualifies
as a major revision. It would be nice if greater effort were expeneded
to ensure backward API compatibility.

Kurt
-- 
"The voters have spoken, the bastards ..."