Good developers will also prefer to be well paid and have a good environment while working with modern toys instead of MUMPS infested codebase.

(This is not an argument in favor of running after every new technology immediately, but you'll have trouble hiring and keeping good development on a JavaEE 2 environment with SVN build system based on 1990 code practices.)

I was too flippant. It isn't about "shiny toys", it is about being respected enough within an organization to be trusted to self-determine technical direction. It is difficult to hire good developers if you have a reputation for thinking you know best when it comes to very technical decisions like when it does and doesn't make sense to upgrade individual software components. It is definitely a balance, but the grandparent comment struck me as sounding like it was on the too-paternalistic side.