2006/5/30, Richard Archer <drupal.org@juggernaut.com.au>:

At 11:02 PM -0700 29/5/06, Jonathan Lambert wrote:

...

And nobody ultimately benefits. The people who stay on the version end up on a "fake fork", the user community may get materially fragmented, the users end up with a "tough luck pal" response from the community for support

This is where Drupal has real problems. Because Drupal's API changes so radically and so often, it pretty much forces established sites with any customizations at all to stick with whatever version they first built their site on.

Hmm. I'm new to Drupal (i jump into it with a 4.3) and i'm not an active developer (i.e i only do my own developpement and test alot -but don't have oportunity to report a bug because those i've noticed were already submited- however, since 4.6, a part of my business -yes i'm consultant and own a web agency- is based on Drupal). I agree with the point that Drupal's API changes often, and it's a good thing.. It's a good point because this let Drupal in the competition and show an evolution of the product (being more and more mature and able to face the new needs). This has been debated many times. However, i don't agree when you say that those changes are always or often radical.. For far i know the major change was the node system the introduction of taxynomani (users can see them and love them), then now the new FAPI (i know developers do/will love it) and AJAX stuffs (this later is only cosmetic/marketing and is done the right way : inobstructive and degrade well). Those major changes were really needed, but they don't occur every morning.. In another hand, Drupal team always try to archive back compatibility ; that's not always the same with to other CMS.. And if we refuse to go ahead, we'll be in the same situation as PHP-Nuke (people will fork and do those changes and users will follow them one day or another leting us with a young-so-old baby).. Now, with time passing, users less need to interact directly with core (let this side for modules) because Drupal is becoming more and more easy and customisable (a good reason to upgrade).

And since people (at least the ones I know) expect their site to last longer than 12 months they will inevitably find themselves using an insecure, unsupported version of Drupal.

Drupal is a bit like Linux kernel and many FSF tools :] Old versions are not really abandonned but not official supported.. because there's no human ressource for that.. As mentionned by Dries, old versions may be updated if there are people to give them some love (essentialy patching and reviewing submited patches..). This is more than what can offer many projects at SourceForge..