What makes upgrade better in other technology world compare to MS? Last time I checked, other technologies are rarely backward compatible, cut support for previ

What makes upgrade better in other technology world compare to MS? Last time I checked, other technologies are rarely backward compatible, cut support for previous version not too long after new release is out, tons of controversies on newer releases. One choice is not to upgrade at all. No big deal I assume. It's not like you're going to write a lot more of new code. What makes you think open standards are better? just because they're open thus they're better? how about the technology value behind it? 'One Microsoft Way' isn't overly bad. At least it doesn't waste your time trying to decide which one is better (Rails vs PHP vs Django vs TurboGears vs Pylons vs Symfony vs JSF). You know what, these are the example of wasting your time: Servlet (need template)-> JSP/Servlet (not good enough) -> Struts (some design mistakes) -> Spring (mkay.. well) -> JSF (oh, we finally catch ASP.NET up) PHP -> PEAR -> Symfony/CakePHP/Ignition I wouldn't say Python stack is "wasting your time" yet but time will tell how long Django/TurboGears/Pylons will last. They're cool frameworks and I like Python more than C#. But I haven't really heard much from their communities lately other than the Django book had finally been released after deadline slips (I know they have good reasons but whatever).