> You do realize even the Linux kernel doesn't make any commitments regarding API stability, right?
You say "even" the Linux kernel; actually most projects don't and Linux is a rare exception, and I do think it's a bad idea for both technical and nontechnical reasons. (Compare with GCC's refusal to offer a stable API between frontend and backend, which I'd argue is a big reason why LLVM is overtaking it).
> There's always BSD, if you want compatibility back to the Sun days in some cases, (Win32 is another option).
I actually do run FreeBSD these days; one of the reasons this issue still bothers me is that compatibility with BSD is likely to be collateral damage from the systemd push (it's getting harder and harder to run Gnome on BSD, for example). It was particularly frustrating that systemd basically killed off Debian GNU/kFreeBSD just as it was becoming a first-class architecture; that could have been the best of all worlds.
You say "even" the Linux kernel; actually most projects don't and Linux is a rare exception, and I do think it's a bad idea for both technical and nontechnical reasons. (Compare with GCC's refusal to offer a stable API between frontend and backend, which I'd argue is a big reason why LLVM is overtaking it).
> There's always BSD, if you want compatibility back to the Sun days in some cases, (Win32 is another option).
I actually do run FreeBSD these days; one of the reasons this issue still bothers me is that compatibility with BSD is likely to be collateral damage from the systemd push (it's getting harder and harder to run Gnome on BSD, for example). It was particularly frustrating that systemd basically killed off Debian GNU/kFreeBSD just as it was becoming a first-class architecture; that could have been the best of all worlds.