Re:Why Johnny Won't Upgrade
by grishka on Thursday August 27, 2020 @07:02AM
(#24292377)
That's the point. If updates are expensive, you'd think twice about pushing one out every week for no good reason.
As far as file formats go, how often do you need to change these, anyway? I'm fascinated with most of the mainstream file formats (except mp3, mp3 sucks) — they're built with extreme extensibility in mind, and you have to try really hard to make something incompatible with the rest of the world. So, then, what stops you from designing your own file formats to be extensible? You add a new feature, you add a new section to your file. The user downgrades, and the old version skips over that section because it doesn't know about it. It's easy.
And besides, I've seen a lot of software that's able to save files that are 100% compatible with older versions of itself if that's what the user asks for. Microsoft Office is one example.
As far as file formats go, how often do you need to change these, anyway? I'm fascinated with most of the mainstream file formats (except mp3, mp3 sucks) — they're built with extreme extensibility in mind, and you have to try really hard to make something incompatible with the rest of the world. So, then, what stops you from designing your own file formats to be extensible? You add a new feature, you add a new section to your file. The user downgrades, and the old version skips over that section because it doesn't know about it. It's easy.
And besides, I've seen a lot of software that's able to save files that are 100% compatible with older versions of itself if that's what the user asks for. Microsoft Office is one example.