In theory, yes. In practice, if a OS or library update uncovers bugs in many programs, that update won’t get favorable reviews.
That’s the reason behind Linux’s “we do not break userspace!” rule (https://linuxreviews.org/WE_DO_NOT_BREAK_USERSPACE), and also why Microsoft Windows has layer upon layer of APIs, a copy of the Windows 95 memory manager (https://mcpmag.com/articles/2010/07/27/trip-down-memory-lane...), why large databases support character sets that probably haven’t been used anywhere since before many HN readers were born (https://docs.oracle.com/goldengate/1212/gg-winux/GWUAD/wu_ch...), etc.
(Apple has a totally different viewpoint on this. That’s one reason it never really got into businesses for a long time)
Block real innovation like what?
> Granted, Desktop Linux doesn't need another Python 2 -> 3 or X.org -> Wayland deathmarch...
That's all userspace? Userspace doesn't care it breaks. That's why userspace sucks. You need to keep compatibility if you want to have a stable base to build something. That's why we have (sometimes silly) standards like SUS or POSIX.
"we do not break userspace" at least garantees that you need to fix only the userspace, and not the whole thing all the time.
Significant changes in the kernel already often need years to land because of the multitude of configurations and interfaces that have to be supported. And even longer to deprecate and remove. Not necessarily a bad thing, just the price of success.
Large-scale breakages like the Wayland transition affect the whole Desktop Linux ecosystem, and are just an example of what mayhem fundamental changes can cause.
On a similar note, Im sure there was a suggestion to artificially make the previous golang sort function unstable so that users wouldn't come to rely on stable behaviour where it wasn't guaranteed. I quite like the idea, start the fight against hyrum's law!
Otherwise the only way to have a non-stable sort function that currently happens-to-be stable would have to include a randomized shuffle afterwards to ensure no one goes around depending on it…
It would be equivalent to assuming the golang ABI was stable because it survived unmodified for a couple versions, despite it being explicitly not. And then freezing the ABI to maintain a guarantee it explicitly didn’t want to maintain.