[rbanffy]

Kind of.

I want all 7400s to be four NAND gates, regardless of how they are implemented. As long as the results are correct, you might as well put a little ARM controller pretending to be four NAND gates.

For analog parts, I agree any change to the data sheet should receive at least a different suffix letter.

[OptionOfT]

I disagree. At a certain moment you start to rely on behavior, knowingly or unknowingly.

These kind of changes might surface bugs that you never had.

https://xkcd.com/1172/

[sidpatil]

In software, this is known as Hyrum's Law: https://www.hyrumslaw.com/

[rbanffy]

I don’t care for bugs that never manifest themselves under intended uses.

[rowanG077]

If you relied on behavior not in the spec this is on you.

[adrian_b]

In these cases of the TI parts, some of their most important specifications, like maximum supply voltage, noise and slew rate, have been changed, and not by a few percent, but by even a factor close to 2.

For so great changes, it is really not acceptable to use the same part number, especially when the part numbers have been in widespread use for many decades, so most users who are familiar to them will not bother to check again their latest specifications, where they could notice that they are no longer what they knew.