On 5-Oct-05, at 2:18 AM, goran at krampe.se wrote:
>
> But I sense a shift in this matter - we are gradually changing our
> mindset and I think we will start seeing progress in these parts too.
> And yes, it will mean the backwards compatibility will suffer - but
> frankly, I rather see Squeak moving forward and a clear "directive"  
> with
> each release explaining what major differences you need to be aware of
> in order to migrate your code forward (this has been missing earlier).

The (relatively) simple answer to backwards compatibility is that the  
old system doesn't go away, the old VMs are still there, the code is  
still open and so anyone can keep an old version going as long as  
they need.  If an OS change means some small VM changes are needed -  
you can do it! No proprietary lockdown to stop you or to cause the  
sky to be darkened with wingtips as salesmen descend to try to bully  
you into the 'very reasonable upgrade terms'.

What we _do_ need is some improvement in the image format testing and  
handling so that users can easily have a 3.7 and 4.6 system on their  
machine without it getting confusing.


tim
-- 
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim