[sam0x17]

A side rant: for some reason in recent years it has been OK to make breaking changes. I remember a time when these were considered a nuclear option -- now popular libraries will make breaking changes for minor aesthetic reasons, resulting in billions of wasted developer hours changing foobar to foo_bar.

[rob_c]

Yup, this is what major releases are for and frankly we need more people like Linus reminding people don't break your external APIs!

[sam0x17]

Some projects _never_ make breaking changes, and major version bumps represent major additions.

[rob_c]

Very true and these are the gold standard in some regards. But not everyone has a crystal ball and are beholdant to external factors they don't control. E.g. the pcie bus evolving forces Linux to change, and not all change is bad.