You can do whatever you want to it! But would you expect an NVidia graphics card to work with AMD drivers? The controller isn't the one the drivers were written for, so it breaks. Not surprising.
It would be perfectly reasonable to not force updates and allow users to continue with the current version forever if that keeps them running. But it's not reasonable to just break people's functional devices with an unavoidable update.
It's not a perfect analogy, but the rules on radio interference with devices spring to mind: you need to cope with some interference and you need to not emit it. This results in a more stable ecosystem, even though you could sensibly argue that if one side is stuck to absolutely, the need for the other wouldn't exist.
Sounds like the early 1990's.