Block Size Debate Analogy / Workaround: Bitcoin is Like Windows 3.11

Hello all, I wanted to add another analogy here to this block size debate, in case helpful. I understand some may not see it this way, so apologies in advance if it ruffles anyone's feathers. In some ways, however, to me at least - Bitcoin is like Windows 3.11. Before Bitcoin everything was DOS - something completely disruptive and good for society has come into the computing space that exponentially improves upon almost everything in the space that existed before it. Now there is a huge debate about if there should ever be a Windows 95, XP, Pro, etc., that scales better and makes advances over time, but doesn’t support facets of older versions as it gets updated.  What will happen to 3.11 users/developers/etc. who don't upgrade that have money and/or important tech tied into the 3.11 platform? Should it just be Windows 3.11 forever except with better programs that continue to be built to run on it? Or, should we agree to only change it if 100% of Windows users or Windows developers agree on upgrading?

Regardless of what side we all stand on, I just want to point out that this mailing list is full of incredibly brilliant minds leading the charge into perhaps one of the greatest technical achievements in recent decades. Maybe it would be a good idea for each side of the issue here to democratically appoint a developer representative, and then allow the representatives to achieve a framework and hammer out the details of the solution together?

Hope you all have nice weekends, Will

> In some ways, however, to me at
> least - Bitcoin is like Windows 3.11.

[...]

> Now there is a huge debate about if there
> should ever be a Windows 95, XP, Pro, etc., that scales better and makes
> advances over time, but doesn’t support facets of older versions as it gets
> updated.

I like your analogy for how it frames blockchain compatibility in terms of the backward compatibility that hopefully most computer-literate people already understand, but there's a key ingredient missing.

It's as if, if everyone in the world did somehow upgrade to Windows 95, it would become forever impossible to take a program written *on* Windows 95 but *for* Windows 3.11, and successfully run it on a Windows 3.11 computer. It would be as if cross-compilers from Windows 95 to Windows 3.11 didn't, and couldn't, exist. Any coins that have post-hardfork coinbase outputs anywhere in their tree of inputs (a Windows 3.11 program, that's written on a computer that has ever run a Windows 95 program) can never be spent on the no-change side of the fork.