There's a strong principle in upstream Linux kernel about "You don't break userspace"[1], that I really wish more folks would get into their heads, but most especially a variant "You don't subtly break userspace".
If you're going to replace an existing binary, under the same name, you need to be like-for-like in commands, even if your guts are completely different. Very few people give a damn about how it's actually implemented, just does it do what they need it to do.
If you want to do things differently, do it under a different name and have it be an explicit break for an end user by not shipping with the original and let people choose to install it if they really don't want the new thing. Breaking things subtly is completely unacceptable.
[1] espoused really clearly, as part of an infamous rant https://lore.kernel.org/all/CA+55aFy98A+LJK4+GWMcbzaa1zsPBRo...
Besides that userspace has been incompatible between distros for at least 30 years because everyone has that one special patch the library needs on their distro that isn't accepted upstream and breaks things beyond repair.
This was already the case in the 1990s when Applixware shipped 30 different versions of their software on one CD-Rom because it should run on different distros and their versions.
And back then there weren't that many, mostly Red Hat, SuSE and Debian.