Statement on backwards compatibility?

Does anyone know of a link that describes Microsoft's official stance on
backwards compatibility?

The terms upwards and backwards compatibility are a little ambiguous, and
depend on which way you're looking through the telescope. In this context, I
refer to the expectation that products compiled on a higher O/S version can
be distributed and run on older O/S versions.

Most people would expect upwards compatibility. For instance, if you
compiled a well-behaved program under W2K then it should run under W2003.
Few people who have been involved in large-scale software development,
across different platforms (e.g. UNIX), would expect the latter. For
instance, if a "versioned" struct had been changed in size then older
versions of the O/S may not know how to handle it.

I personally would not expect backwards compatibility (as defined above)
because I've seen the issues that can arise. However, I'm looking for a link
to any statement on the subject in relation to the Windows O/S

Tony Proctor


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