[Reelin]

> tell users that something can't be done when the reality is it's entirely possible but the software won't do it

This bit really stands out to me, and it bothers me to no end when I encounter it in the wild.

It even afflicts FLOSS software! Without meaning to single out any one project in particular, a concrete example that's fresh on my mind is KDE's Dolphin. Lately "sudo dolphin" results in the flat-out lie that "Executing Dolphin as root is not possible.", rather than a much more informative statement such as "Doing this would make an entire class of otherwise impossible exploits possible, so the maintainer has made a personal judgment call to disallow this behavior."

I think all software everywhere ought to conform to KDE's Human Interface Guidelines of "simple by default, powerful when needed" but would also like to see something added along the lines of:

* Don't lie to users - be as transparent as reasonably possible.

* Don't make value judgments or be (needlessly) authoritarian - software should restrict itself to doing its job and doing it well.

Another (historical) example that comes to mind: https://github.com/tpope/heroku-fucking-console