I used to think that binary compatibility benefits proprietary applications, but I'm not so sure anymore. From a commercial perspective, when we break binary co

I used to think that binary compatibility benefits proprietary applications, but I'm not so sure anymore. From a commercial perspective, when we break binary compatibility (not that we want to), it's an opportunity for selling more stuff. Many distributions do periodic mass rebuilds anyway and do not need that much long-term ABI compatibility. Binary compatibility seems mostly for people who compile their own software, but have not automated that and therefore couldn't keep up with updates if there wasn't ABI compatibility.