Comment by JeremyNT

Right - maintaining backwards compatibility is deciding to take on additional technical debt.

I think the implicit calculation here is that if you push a release that breaks the user's workflow, they can point to a specific point in time where things became frustrating and there will be a PR hit at that moment in time.

If instead you maintain compatibility, the small costs of all the technical debt accrue over time to make the experience worse than it might otherwise be, but users may not even notice or have a conception of what they may be missing for having stayed on this path.

They ultimately may end up with a worse product / UX, but they have no specific reason to complain about it.