A language in which you can't conditionally hot-patch other people's code requires modifications to happen upstream. Thus technical debates become political debates between the constituencies of multiple incompatible forks of "the" ecosystem. Version hell times fork wars.
True, but often forking is the relatively cheap part. Maintaining the fork is the expensive part, especially if thou shalt not miss critical security fixes among a sea of noise from constant breaking changes in umpteen dependencies. At the wrong end of the spectrum: npm.
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Security updates are a valid concern, but I would generally address them elsewhere in language design (cf. object capability languages or algebraic effects). They're also the exception, not the rule. Most 'maintenance' is new features or behavior, which can safely be deferred.
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Behavior changes may include lesser bug-fixes. But most bug-fixes also don't require breaking changes to an API, thus do not hinder merging of changes.
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