Except we are talking about Linux specifically, the "users" here in your analogy are people working in the collective kernel code, and there is a unique culture and set of practices around maintaining this because it's not some REST API where if something breaks you just shove a bug fix out for your part.
Certainly APIs exposed to userspace can’t ever break. But if a change can be completely hidden by fixing everything all at once (as a trivial example, renaming something) that should be ok, no?
