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From: "Scott Hirsch" <shirsch.nospam@mathworks.com>
Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.matlab
Subject: Re: matlab backward compatibility options
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:22:02 +0000 (UTC)
Organization: The MathWorks Inc
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Thanks to everybody who has chimed in on this thread.  Release compatibility is always a hot topic, and a big challenge faced by software developers.  There's always a tension between maintaining compatibility and evolving the software with bug fixes and features that customers demand.  You can look at Apple and Microsoft to see two very different approaches to the problem - Microsoft has put a huge emphasis on release compatibility (I occasionally hear of old DOS programs still running fine), while Apple has shown a willingness occasionally to throw lots away for the sake of moving forward (OS 9 to OS X was just the biggest example).  There are obviously benefits and drawbacks to each approach.

The MathWorks does not currently have an official published policy regarding release compatibility, though we do take this topic quite seriously.  We have processes and tooling in place to help us make the best overall decisions, but realize it's not possible to please everybody all of the time.  We've been working hard on this for a while now, so I hope that users are finding newer releases on average to be doing better in this regard. This doesn't mean that we don't make incompatible changes, just that the ones we do make are hopefully well reasoned and in everybody's best interest.

- scott