> Please note, you are assuming I have the ability to control the version of Windows the product lives on. Some products still have to support up to Windows XP.

It's what, 6 different versions of Windows, with quite clearly defined API "eras"? For Linux, you have just a huge ball of mud^H^H^H distros each of which has (or doesn't have) who knows versions of what, but of course, there you can just give out a .tgz with source code and say to your users "it's your problem now to build it for yourself since you're using Arch".