KIP-1156 — Define an official backward compatibility contract

Discussion ProtocolAdmin

Defines an official backward compatibility contract for Apache Kafka covering which wire protocol versions, client APIs, and configuration options are supported across major, minor, and patch releases, to be effective from Kafka 5.0. Without a formal contract, compatibility guarantees were implicit and enforced only through individual KIPs, making it unclear to users what upgrades were safe and preventing the project from reducing its maintenance burden.

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