In reply to Phillip Hawley.

You seem to have a rather sizable axe to grind with WordPress, fueled by many assumptions and hyperbole.

I'm not going to address any of the comments directed at me, because that seems like a waste of my time at this point, but I would like to point out that I'm not a developer myself, I'm a 10-year user of WordPress directly involved in many aspects of the community. The developers here who replied to you also started our as users at one point, and many of the core WordPress developers started as users and built their development education on the back of WordPress.

To answer your question above, PHP and MySQL (the backbones of WordPress) are constantly evolving, and so is WordPress. Unlike your definition of backwards-compatibility, there are no "older standards or formats" to "receive, read, view or play," just interoperable code by way of PHP, MySQL, Javascript, and APIs, and those are all constantly evolving.

This is web development, and unlike software development, to evolve is to survive. Just ask b2 where it is now. :) You've probably never heard of it, because it stopped evolving over 10 years ago until others picked up the torch, began upgrading it to current standards and expectations at the time, and called it WordPress.

Code has to evolve, it's not about reading or writing a format, it's about interoperability. Trust me, even if WordPress were 100% of what you feel backwards-compatibility should be, you should never use a 4-year-old untouched plugin. Chances are, it won't even operate under the current version of PHP, much less WordPress.

This evolution is why the focus is on developer education and assistance. If developers want to monitor development, they can. If they want to test their product with a new WordPress version before a release, they can. If they need help making their product compatible, it's only an email away. And, if they choose to abandon their product, it is very likely that it will take several versions for anything of note to break in it (I use one in particular which hasn't been touch for 2 years), and by then there will be plenty of alternatives (there are currently about 5 for the one I mentioned).

Remember, everyone is doing this for free, they are all volunteers, that includes the core WordPress developers as much as it does the free plugin and theme developers. The only people actually profiting from this for sure are those who charge for their plugins and themes outright. Thus, the load has to be shared amongst all involved. The core WordPress developers do their best to keep things backwards-compatible, they provide education and help where that isn't sufficient, and it's up to the plugin and theme developers to do the rest.

Anyway, if you're still reading: Like we have all mentioned, we have never actually seen a major release of WordPress where "everything breaks" necessitating "starting from scratch." It's not because they're all developers (again, I'm not), it's because we are actively involved in the entire community, including supporting other users. So, if that ever happens to you again, head over to the WordPress Support Forums. We’re a huge and helpful community, and we’ll do our best to get you back up and running, all for free. :)