I don't get why people expect no breaking changes [LWN.net]

I don't get why people expect no breaking changes

Posted May 22, 2025 0:40 UTC (Thu) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
In reply to: I don't get why people expect no breaking changes by mb
Parent article: Recent disruptive changes from Setuptools

> It's always easy to expect everybody to update and do the work, if you don't have to actually spend/pay the work.

We can turn that around very easily. The Setuptools developers were, technically, under no obligation to revert the change at all. They could just as easily have said "What part of 'NO WARRANTY' and 'major version bump' did you not understand?" and WONTFIXed all the bug reports. That they were generous enough to revert their change should be taken with gratitude, not contempt for the change having been made in the first place.

I don't get why people expect no breaking changes

Posted May 22, 2025 10:00 UTC (Thu) by tux3 (subscriber, #101245) [Link] (2 responses)

If we take the view that the setuptools developers are under no obligation to play nice and be considerate, then it stands that their users are under to obligation to respond with gratitude. You're perfectly allowed to do that, but it always cuts both ways.

You can take a "let others deal with it" attitude, but you can't force users to like it. Doing unpopular things is a reliable way to become unpopular.

I don't get why people expect no breaking changes

Posted May 29, 2025 5:05 UTC (Thu) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link] (1 responses)

FOSS is a gift. Gratitude is the normal social response to gifts. Nobody was forced to use Setuptools. Or at least, the Setuptools developers themselves did not force anyone to use Setuptools.

I don't get why people expect no breaking changes

Posted May 29, 2025 6:41 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> FOSS is a gift. Gratitude is the normal social response to gifts.

??? Depends on the giver.

Don't remember the story (I don't like Dickens), but he wrote a wonderful short about about a Christmas meal thrown for "the deserving" (or maybe undeserving).

Oh - and as far as development "aid" is concerned, most gift horses most definitely SHOULD be looked in the mouth.

Cheers,
Wol