# Breaking changes

We also encourage you to get familiar with <https://semver.org/> which is applied (with limitations) in the versioning.&#x20;

### What is a breaking change and why it matters?

One of the trickiest aspects of being a standard provider is managing change. On the one hand, you want to continually evolve your offering, adding new features, and improving old ones to maintain your competitive edge. Standards compete with each other just like any other entities. On the other hand, you know that continuity is paramount to your consumers, so changes should have minimal impact on existing solutions built of top of the standard

In any case, something you definitely want to watch out for is *breaking change*, which can cause your consumer's applications to fail.

### Examples of breaking changes

* change of attribute type or renaming or removing existing options for content
* removing mandatory element or attribute
* moving existing attribute under a different existing element
* renaming mandatory element or attribute

### What i*sn’t* a breaking change?

* Adding a non-mandatory attribute or element
* Changing attribute description


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