> the problem would be in supporting many more versions things like backporting fixes and maintaining upgrade paths are extremely expensive in the long run fr

> the problem would be in supporting many more versions things like backporting fixes and maintaining upgrade paths are extremely expensive in the long run from my experience, something that I think short release cycles would exacerbate. I think it comes down to what's mentioned in response to the comment about short release cycles: people are reluctant to upgrade an RDBMS because of the risk involved and expense to test compatibility with a new release. I dunno maybe the problem is finding the shortest release cycle possible without putting people off and adding too much overhead?