Could you imagine phpBB 3.2 being release with a note that people
can't automatically migrate their users/posts and none of their mods
will work? Or microsoft saying that all old .NET 3.5 framework
applications won't work on .NET 4.0 and people should dumb down their
3.5 applications? Of course not and I am similarly surprised that
there is no migration support or legacy mode in Joomla 1.6.

Its not just a matter of "dumbing down" code as lots of things are
renamed. Meaning any joomla app that uses events won't work anymore.
Why not have a legacy mode for these things. It would be very simple
to have a plugin that calls the old events inside the new event name
to ensure backward compatibility.

Similarly it would be easy to detect a joomla 1.5 install XML file and
install using the Joomla 1.5 xml type install file. I can give lots
more examples from your changelog document where it would be easy to
ensure backward compatibility. Of course people would have to make
their code PHP 5 compatible and remove dependency on some of the
libaries removed in Joomla 1.6.

Having no automatic migration tool for users and content is also a
disaster. Uptake of Joomla 1.6 will be low if no migration is provided
and there is no compatibility for components. Functions like ACL,
flexible categories, more easily upgrades are already available for
Joomla 1.5 and users would not have any incentive to upgrade to Joomla
1.6. This is not unfixable:

1) create a legacy plugin that will allow developers to make small
modifications to their Joomla 1.5 product to make them work on both
Joomla 1.5 and 1.6. This alone will save thousands of hours of work
for people involved in Joomla.

2) during the Joomla 1.6 install process there needs to be an option
to automatically import, users, categories and content to allow people
to migrate their site, even if some of their components do not work
anymore.

I'll be happy to help out with both of these. Thanks, Marius

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