Theres also the burden on Microsoft that nothing can break. Meaning: anything that used to work before (in an earlier incarnation of Windows) must continue to work in later versions. I don't think Linux has this burden. They are more free to break stuff and so more free to innovate.

I'm quite sure Linux has the same burden. Here is what Linus Torvalds has to say: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75

In Linux Kernel development there is one realy important Rule: Don't break Userspace!

Its like the Windows burden you mentioned, but much more reasonable imho.

Thanks, that's really interesting, even though the author toned much of his initial satire down in a later update.

curiously, nowadays (i.e. the article/original comment is from 2013) some google employees voice similar criticism about their own engineering culture: building new things are rewarded, maintaining an old thing is not.

I guess it's an industry-wide problem. It would be illuminating to learn of any counter examples, where a big software company manages NOT to fall into this trap.

Just a hunch, but maybe you could try searching outside of SV.

This deserves its own post.

it had one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5688151