I'd say what's interesting is that the people who don't do that are probably overrepresented within the Linux community. The average tenure of devs there is in

I'd say what's interesting is that the people who don't do that are probably overrepresented within the Linux community. The average tenure of devs there is in excess of the average tenture of most tech employees of today. It might be more meaningful to measure continuity as provided by organizations (i.e. communities vs. corporations, for example) as they address turnover, but I'm not so sure. Frankly tech churn seems to be about equal on both sides. Other systems have revamped their audio stacks on occasion as well. It's the economics/business models that favor certain kinds of finish, especially backwards compatibility. I'd further submit the Linux story there has improved over time. For example PulseAudio didn't attempt to provide much of an upgrade path to apps using aRts and ESD (its predecessors), but PipeWire provides continuity for apps written against ALSA, PulseAudio and JACK. And as PulseAudio and JACK were difficult to run side-by-side at times, it actually reduces fragmentation as well. By aligning audio and video device access within one system it also generalizes system behavior.