ISV/VAR/SI: Speak now, or forever hold your peace!

On two life altering occasions I heard that phrase spoken, and writing it down still makes me weak in the knees. On the first occasion, I wish someone would have spoken up. But I digress ;-)

On several occasions I have conversed with customers on the subject of versioning and compatibility. Both subjects are complicated to understand and difficult to address in the software engineering realm.

For those who read my blogs, or have heard one of my Webcasts, it is evident that I am passionate about this subject, in particular as it relates to independently versioning dynamic components (i.e. Add-in’s, Extensibility, Public API’s, …). Compatibility also factors into this equation. I could tease apart the two subjects but I would like to hear your thoughts on both versioning and compatibility.

I was recently reading a blog entry from Jason Zander. He has a wealth of information and I highly respect him. I’m not just saying that because he is in my management chain and its review time J In Jason’s post on, “Red Bits and Compatibility”, he has a link to Soma’s post, where the question is asked about your opinion on your expectations and thoughts on platform compatibility. The overwhelming response to Soma can be summed up in the following comment - “There is absolutely NO reason to maintain backwards compatibility with previous versions of .NET with new versions”.

So the question I have for you (remember speak now … ;-) is whether ISV’s feel differently. I don’t plan to seed the conversation beyond that. Remember, you can reply anonymously.