Yeah, this sounds really misguided. If they change/add functionality, why not move that to a new option? Those who want the new way can use the new feature, and scripts won't act differently depending on which version is installed.
New features should get new options; they should not move old features to new flags and put the new features on the old flags. Nuts.
Hehe, you know what makes the software more complex to use? Having to grep in the output of "grep --version" before deciding which switch to pass to grep.. :)
New features should get new options; they should not move old features to new flags and put the new features on the old flags. Nuts.