[whoopdedo]

Needing to maintain compatibility certainly prevented Microsoft from fixing prevalent bugs. The C runtime remained non-POSIX compliant for a very long time because applications were written to expect the incorrect behavior. Some of those bugs led to security holes that were exploited, yet couldn't be patched for fear of breaking third-party software. That's how we end up with redistributable runtimes as applications were told not to depend on the out-of-date system libraries.