alt Hacker NewsThat's got worse recently. LTO used to be guaranteed compatible two generations back; an LTO-7 drive can read LTO-6 and LTO-5 tape. With newer standards, they've cut that to one generation. Your point stands, but folks should be aware the treadmill has been sped up in the past few years.
Ouch, only one generation now? Back in the day, we started with a second-hand LTO-3 tape library, then upgraded to an LTO-5 when that died. I remember learning about this stuff (we were only an SME, not an enterprise, so didn't have any knowledge about these things), and realising we'd have to be careful with our upgrade plan.