02-04-2014, 03:51 AM
You make a good point, but there comes a time when everything pre 1.7 is implemented in MCS, and new features will crash your older client. By then, only a very small minority will be using an old client to play vanilla, so you would be veteran off downloading an old compatible vanilla server.
Besides, keeping old protocols aren't a perfectly win win thing - there have already been issues reported with the server crashing when an older client does something funny. Additionally, the bunch of extra legacy code increases the executable size (maybe?) and developers adding new packets potentially have to trawl through many protocol revisions to addba single packet - which also means that a mistake in an old protocol would again crash older clients and take longer to fix as mist are using newer versions, and so they aren't affected.
After all, what's the use of a vanilla server if only you are on it?
Besides, keeping old protocols aren't a perfectly win win thing - there have already been issues reported with the server crashing when an older client does something funny. Additionally, the bunch of extra legacy code increases the executable size (maybe?) and developers adding new packets potentially have to trawl through many protocol revisions to addba single packet - which also means that a mistake in an old protocol would again crash older clients and take longer to fix as mist are using newer versions, and so they aren't affected.
After all, what's the use of a vanilla server if only you are on it?