5 ms·

The company with the best track record of maintaining backwards compatibility in the entire tech industry owns Github. I'm not worried about that.

benatkin 4y ago
If I can't afford a license, I don't have backwards compatibility, TYVM
mrkeen 4y ago
My formative experience of their backwards compatibility was being unable to open old word docs in newer versions of word. Open office could. Go figure. As for how long their tech lasts, I used XNA for a game jam in 2012, and had an alright experience. I could no longer download and use XNA by the time the 2013 game jam came around.
- wizzwizz4 4y ago
  > My formative experience of their backwards compatibility was being unable to open old word docs in newer versions of word. From experience: Word's still dropping support for older documents, and LibreOffice still supports them. (The only LO incompatibility I know is missing Math formulae sometimes, and that might have been fixed; if not, it's a fairly straightforward code change, since OOXML Math tags contain textboxes.)
- cobalt 4y ago
  you can still download it https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=23714 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=237...
  - mrkeen 4y ago
    It requires VS 2010. Got a link to that?
nextlevelwizard 4y ago
I dont get this argument. Docker didnt break backwards compatibility. They literally just wanted big projects to pay for the storage and bandwidth they were using.
- Karunamon 4y ago
  If all they wanted was the whales to pay up, why did they not target the big projects, using some objective metric like pull count or actual bandwidth consumption rather than literally everybody? Team projects are often used for namespacing reasons and teams of one are not uncommon.
  - nextlevelwizard 4y ago
    How do you distinguish between big and small projects?
- palata 4y ago
  They said: "You have 30 days to move away or pay. If you don't do anything, you will lose access to your published images, but we won't remove them. So they will rot on our registry and confuse your users." At least that's what I understood. And it really sucked. I would even understand if they did not want to pay for open source images. But 1) give me more than 30 days 2) either remove my images or leave me in control to remove them later, not something in between.
- twblalock 4y ago
  It's a really bad move to give something away for free for years, and then suddenly announce you will charge for it and everyone has 30 days to figure it out. Over a shorter time scale that would be called "bait and switch" and it would be illegal. Over a longer time scale it's still a massive dick move and destroys customer trust.
  - redeeman 4y ago
    when most customers trust the tech giants like google, payment processors and such, they have already been taught not to apply scrutiny to whom to trust
eyegor 4y ago
However, their websites have not held to their software standards. Links break all the time in my experience, especially for older documentation (msdn, etc).
koito17 4y ago
>The company with the best track record of maintaining backwards compatibility in the entire tech industry owns Github. They also own TS, which seems to have major breaking changes each year and necessitate annual churn and refactoring of entire codebases. Windows having remarkable backwards compatibility does not mean the rest of their products do, too. EDIT: I could also bring up one of their other products, Lean, whose 4.x versions have so much breakage that mathlib has been on a community-maintained fork of Lean 3 for as long as I can remember.
- killingtime74 4y ago
  What does TS stand for?
  - wizzwizz4 4y ago
    TypeScript.
    - andybak 4y ago
      Yeah. I figured it out from context but we really shouldn't have to. Type a few more characters, people... We aren't all part of the same micro-community.
eikenberry 4y ago
Just out of curiosity why do you think being good at backwards compatibility of your software impacts business decisions around a SAAS?
- Osiris 4y ago
  For me it’s because they are very careful not to screw over customers that rely on certain behavior. Having said that, Microsoft does sometimes break backwards compatibility. I sell a Windows app (a battery meter) that cannot work on Windows 11 because the new Taskbar doesn’t expose an interface for plugins to render data on the taskbar (IDeskBand is the old interface). So I can display a small window to the user but it’s far less convenient that showing it persistently in the taskbar.
  - wizzwizz4 4y ago
    Can you use the old-fashioned way, and repeatedly update the tray icon?
hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
Can’t say the same for their documentation, which contains more broken links than actual content.
alex_duf 4y ago
past performance is not indicative of future results
isodev 4y ago
Backwards compatibility buys enterprise licenses. These are for profit corporations - even their free tier has you somewhere in a marketing funnel or a revenue structure. Today they have a “good” CEO, tomorrow it could be another Steve Ballmer in charge. The bottom line is, one shouldn’t rely on a single corp for something that seems like “critical infrastructure”.

benatkin 4y ago

If I can't afford a license, I don't have backwards compatibility, TYVM

mrkeen 4y ago

My formative experience of their backwards compatibility was being unable to open old word docs in newer versions of word. Open office could. Go figure. As for how long their tech lasts, I used XNA for a game jam in 2012, and had an alright experience. I could no longer download and use XNA by the time the 2013 game jam came around.

wizzwizz4 4y ago
> My formative experience of their backwards compatibility was being unable to open old word docs in newer versions of word. From experience: Word's still dropping support for older documents, and LibreOffice still supports them. (The only LO incompatibility I know is missing Math formulae sometimes, and that might have been fixed; if not, it's a fairly straightforward code change, since OOXML Math tags contain textboxes.)
cobalt 4y ago
you can still download it https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=23714 https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=237...
- mrkeen 4y ago
  It requires VS 2010. Got a link to that?

nextlevelwizard 4y ago

I dont get this argument. Docker didnt break backwards compatibility. They literally just wanted big projects to pay for the storage and bandwidth they were using.

Karunamon 4y ago
If all they wanted was the whales to pay up, why did they not target the big projects, using some objective metric like pull count or actual bandwidth consumption rather than literally everybody? Team projects are often used for namespacing reasons and teams of one are not uncommon.
- nextlevelwizard 4y ago
  How do you distinguish between big and small projects?
palata 4y ago
They said: "You have 30 days to move away or pay. If you don't do anything, you will lose access to your published images, but we won't remove them. So they will rot on our registry and confuse your users." At least that's what I understood. And it really sucked. I would even understand if they did not want to pay for open source images. But 1) give me more than 30 days 2) either remove my images or leave me in control to remove them later, not something in between.
twblalock 4y ago
It's a really bad move to give something away for free for years, and then suddenly announce you will charge for it and everyone has 30 days to figure it out. Over a shorter time scale that would be called "bait and switch" and it would be illegal. Over a longer time scale it's still a massive dick move and destroys customer trust.
- redeeman 4y ago
  when most customers trust the tech giants like google, payment processors and such, they have already been taught not to apply scrutiny to whom to trust

eyegor 4y ago

However, their websites have not held to their software standards. Links break all the time in my experience, especially for older documentation (msdn, etc).

koito17 4y ago

>The company with the best track record of maintaining backwards compatibility in the entire tech industry owns Github. They also own TS, which seems to have major breaking changes each year and necessitate annual churn and refactoring of entire codebases. Windows having remarkable backwards compatibility does not mean the rest of their products do, too. EDIT: I could also bring up one of their other products, Lean, whose 4.x versions have so much breakage that mathlib has been on a community-maintained fork of Lean 3 for as long as I can remember.

killingtime74 4y ago
What does TS stand for?
- wizzwizz4 4y ago
  TypeScript.
  - andybak 4y ago
    Yeah. I figured it out from context but we really shouldn't have to. Type a few more characters, people... We aren't all part of the same micro-community.

eikenberry 4y ago

Just out of curiosity why do you think being good at backwards compatibility of your software impacts business decisions around a SAAS?

Osiris 4y ago
For me it’s because they are very careful not to screw over customers that rely on certain behavior. Having said that, Microsoft does sometimes break backwards compatibility. I sell a Windows app (a battery meter) that cannot work on Windows 11 because the new Taskbar doesn’t expose an interface for plugins to render data on the taskbar (IDeskBand is the old interface). So I can display a small window to the user but it’s far less convenient that showing it persistently in the taskbar.
- wizzwizz4 4y ago
  Can you use the old-fashioned way, and repeatedly update the tray icon?

hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago

Can’t say the same for their documentation, which contains more broken links than actual content.

alex_duf 4y ago

past performance is not indicative of future results

isodev 4y ago

Backwards compatibility buys enterprise licenses. These are for profit corporations - even their free tier has you somewhere in a marketing funnel or a revenue structure. Today they have a “good” CEO, tomorrow it could be another Steve Ballmer in charge. The bottom line is, one shouldn’t rely on a single corp for something that seems like “critical infrastructure”.