[Opensim-dev] Backwards Compatibility

[Hart, Drew E.]

Please excuse the interruption.  I never thought I would comment here,
as I am a novice, but as a heavy user of open sim and a devotee of the
project, I did read one email I wanted to comment on.  If I am mistaken,
please excuse as I am still learning, but Charles said:  "I would
suggest the key is not to break existing behavior since there are over a
thousand OpenSim sims in existence on several grids and standalone
arrays."

My "two cents" is that you should never be too concerned with backward
compatibility.  However, I would recommend, if you are going to break
it, you try to do it as infrequently as possible.  As a user and reader
of everything programming these days, I have found interesting articles
regarding Microsoft's decision to always try to achieve backwards
compatibility and what a mess of things that has made (I can attest to
some of that in Vista) and contrast that with Apple's decision to (I
believe with OSX) start fresh.  Of course, in Apple's instance, everyone
had to rebuy software, but not a whole lot of people complained as the
benefits of not necessarily sticking with the past were evident.
Compare that to Microsoft's code, which has so many millions of lines in
it so someone can run Office 2000, for example.  As someone who would
have to change dozens of sims if you did change something to effect
compatibility, I would have no problem with that, thinking of course
long-term.  Open Sim has been around a comparatively short time when
considering its future, and any changes to make it right for the
long-term should be made regardless of consequence.  Finally, anyone
using Open Sim really can't complain as it is clear it is in the
development stage and things like this should be expected to happen.

Anyway, I just wanted to toss that out there.  Thanks again for
everything you all do.  It's amazing!

Drew

Drew Hart, Technical Support Coordinator, Secretarial Services

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