[austincheney]

> The job of the producers is to produce what the consumers want, not the consumers to accept whatever they want to produce!

But that is the current general practice of software, especially online interconnected software, to force acceptable product preferences to the consumer without regard for consumer demand or competition. Developers typically dictate the choice of architecture and framework and then specify acceptable ranges of performance and design allowed by that framework utterly without regard for what the user wants or willing to pay for. That is developers putting their personal technology preferences before the user concerns or business revenue goals. When you point out the nature of ethics violation the developers most concerned by those technology preferences get really emotional, perhaps hostile. I have seen this at every software job I have held and it’s not limited to any language or class of technologies.

[teilo]

No one forces you to buy or use software. How is software different than any other product? It's engineered a certain way, and offered to customers, who either buy it or do not.

Companies who develop products without regard for consumer demand or the competition are eventually unemployed. They may have a defacto monopoly for a time, but it inevitably ends.

Competition is not only real, but fierce in software, as anyone in corporate IT management will tell you. Because my damn phone never stops ringing with hungry software salescritters vying for my attention.

[austincheney]

> How is software different than any other product?

Software is unregulated.

> Competition is not only real

You are imagining an unstated opinion. I never claimed competition is absent from software but that software developers make decisions without regard for that competition and impose those decisions upon their products without regard for their users or business revenue.

> Companies who develop products without regard for consumer demand or the competition are eventually unemployed.

That sounds like hyperbole. Advertising companies, as an example, do very well without regard for competition or the end user. Companies will continue so long as they are cash flow positive.

[Fjolsvith]

A very valid example of this from the front page of HN today:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23288318