I was recludant to agree woth Linus at first. Why should we avoid break hard? I understand we wany to avoid breaking user interface as much as possible - who wo

I was recludant to agree woth Linus at first. Why should we avoid break hard? I understand we wany to avoid breaking user interface as much as possible - who would want to use an unstable API? But why is it better off to let things fail silently? For example he cited certain obsolete fields in /proc/stats return zeros. Is it because Kernel is used by so many people and projects we can’t afford having some <insert your favorite Linuz utilit> broken after upgrading to a new kernel. Replace Linux kernel with OSX or Android etc Yes of course. But I feel the consequence of never break your interface and never blame userland is to force the users to write tests that can report changed behavior.