[Cryptography] Speculation considered harmful?

[jamesd at echeque.com]

On 1/11/2018 2:10 AM, Nico Williams wrote:
> Microsoft has had the same problem with Windows.  The Linux emulation
> functionality in BSDs and Illumos has run into the same issue as well.
> 
> Your OS may be superior to the one you're emulating, but now you have to
> emulate the very bugs your OS does not have by dint of being designed
> better.

C++14 broke compatibility with C++98 all over the place, in the course 
of supporting automatic memory management.  Everyone is nonetheless 
switching from C++98 to C++14, and only a few people encounter issues.

Of course it helps that anyone recompiling is probably sufficiently 
competent and knowledgeable to fix an issue when it arises.

The way windows handles this problem is that it has a long, long, long, 
list of popular existing software that relies on old Window bugs, and 
then special cases each such program.