Thread:Project:Support desk/Protected variable styles of includes/OutputPage.php vs. extension using it/reply (7)

The change from protected/private to public in a variable is not a security risk. The visibility of variables is just a coding practice to restrict the usage of such variables from external classes, so if you need to make a breaking change on a variable that's private or protected, you can be certain that it won't break external classes because they can't be using it directly.