[coooolbear]

This state of affairs is very much due to competition (instead of cooperation) and the feast-and-famine shape of what software invention and development looks like, especially in the US.

It takes time and effort to optimize software for performance, user-friendliness, developer-friendliness and everything that ethical and mindful developers hold up so highly, but that’s not the kind of thing that the big money or academic prestige is very interested in. The goal is to get the most users possible to participate in something that doesn’t repulse them and ideally draws them in. The concerns of ethics, dignity, and utility are just consequences to settle, occasionally dealt with before the world raises a stink about it, but are hardly ever part of the M.O.

Imagine if developers could make a dignified living working to listen to people and see what they really need or want and can focus on that instead of having to come up with a better ‘feature set’ than their competitors. It’s essentially why we have hundreds of different Dr. Pepper ripoffs sold as ‘alternatives’ to Dr. Pepper (is this really a good use of resources?) instead of making the best Dr. Pepper or finding a way to tailor the base Dr. Pepper to the consumers taste, assuming enough people claim they want a different Dr. Pepper.