Schwern made one small change in the STDERR format, and the recursive cascade of failing test-testing modules hit something like 3000 CPAN distributions.While I agree that this caused problems, those modules were relying on a format that was not spec'ed out or documented.
That is irrelevant. You put something into CPAN, get massive numbers of people using it, and leave it alone and have it remain stable for 4 years, it becomes an API whether you wanted it to be or not :)
Adam K
