Learning from OpenBSD can make computers marginally less horrible
&gt; OS Application Binary Interface (ABI) release inter-compatibility is the cancer killing the modern operating system.<p>I think that&#x27;s only true perspective of an OS developer:<p>ABI inter-compatibility (e.g. the Windows and Linux model) prioritizes <i>customer</i> experience.  Customers hate it when their applications stop working, and application developers don&#x27;t want to spend lots of effort to track platform API changes just to avoid breakage.<p>Abandoning ABI inter-compatibility (OpenBSD, Apple) prioritizes <i>platform developer</i> experience.  They want to be able to freely make API changes and don&#x27;t want to spend time maintaining old APIs that they could use to work on new APIs.<p>I think the problem with the latter is, while there may be a few hundred developers working on a particular OS, there&#x27;s are orders of magnitude more customers and application developers.  Totally abandoning ABI inter-compatibility seems like putting the interests of the very few over the interests of the very many.