If they want to push that responsibility they should do it officially rather than as a suggestion. The company I work at has a concept called a "build horizon."

If they want to push that responsibility they should do it officially rather than as a suggestion. The company I work at has a concept called a "build horizon." The rule is that clients have to be updated within the horizon. Internal services do not have to consider internal clients older than the horizon, and may break them arbitrarily. In effect this means that even the least with it internal clients rarely let their internal releases languish more than about half the length of the horizon, because of the associated risks of missing the cutoff. There are many similar successful concepts that cap the maintenance window that services must tolerate, while at the same time giving developers enough forewarning to understand what is expected of them.