On May 14, 2009, at 11:17 AM, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
>>
>> On a more general note, I wonder why experienced users occasionally
>> resist change in the UI in general (as it breaks things) rather than
>> avoiding to upgrade.
>
> [linguistic point: "avoid" takes a noun or a gerund (which needn't be
> round), not an infinitive.  You want "avoiding an upgrade" or  
> "avoiding
> upgrading" here.]

You are right.  My heartfelt apologies.  Language is to me what people  
(me excluded) speak, not what some book says.  The avoid+infinitive  
construction doesn't get any traction in a Google search (using past  
tense), so I concede.

> You're not trying to ignite another rambling heated debate about  
> changing
> long standing features, are you?  OK, thought not.

God no, I am not.

> Changing the UI makes the new version incompatible with the learning  
> of
> the users of the old versions.

Absolutely.  But if people don't like change, then they shouldn't be  
forced to upgrade if we provided decent support for older versions.   
As you said, a new VCS will hopefully facilitate this.  I use git and  
have evaluated Bazaar, and they both can cherry-pick bugfixes from the  
development branch and facilitate just that.  One could really start  
with Emacs 22.

Projects of the size/importance of Emacs should provide a roadmap with  
a promise to support certain releases for x many years.  But even  
providing [important] bug fixes for the 22 series for a while should  
be considered.

- David
(who is actually a Diplom-Sprachwissenschaftler.)