The traditional way to solve this was to keep the protocol at a 0.x version until mature enough. "Enough", not absolutely perfect. (Of course this can be abuse

The traditional way to solve this was to keep the protocol at a 0.x version until mature enough. "Enough", not absolutely perfect. (Of course this can be abused, like with gmail being "beta" over five years.) After you hit 1.0 then accept that any breaking changes are Big Deal which require a new protocol major version and should only happen once in many years (unless there is a fatal security flaw discovered). Perfect is the enemy of good. People whine about details with email, but this is why email continues (after 40+ years) to be the most interoperable communications mechanism in the world across everything.