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by choobacker 483 days ago
I agree with his issues with dependencies.

But I'm not sure about his other stuff.

"Avoid features that add disproportionate cost"

I expect part of the problem here is that it's often not clear what the value of features until it's available to customers.

Even the costs of bloat are unclear. Take his bank website example. Do we really think many bank customers are choosing banks based on their website's latency? Banks compete on things users actually care about, like interest rates or fees.

Lots of software inevitably won't meet our ideal standards, because given the cost of developers it's not worth doing things The Right Way.
1 comments
graemep 483 days ago
Software does matter. It affects time spent and convenience.

I definitely stay with my bank (Lloyds in the UK) partly because they have a good website, and I will not bank with HSBC because their app will not work if you install things from outside the Google App store (and logging into the website needs the app, at least for me at the moment - I think that can be solved).

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choobacker 483 days ago
> I will not bank with HSBC because their app will not work if you install things from outside the Google App store

I have this requirement too, since I like to use F-Droid.

My point isn't that there are no such users. My point is that product managers in banks don't care about F-Droid users, since there's so few of us that it's not worth them worrying about.

Many websites are giving up Firefox support, and Firefox adoption is much higher than F-Droid.

If a bank app happens to be okay with F-Droid, it's not because they look out for the needs of F-Droid, it's simply by happenstance.

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graemep 482 days ago
Which is hugely damaging socially as it makes markets non-competitive. Its wrong in principle.

> If a bank app happens to be okay with F-Droid, it's not because they look out for the needs of F-Droid, it's simply by happenstance

Not true. They they have to make a deliberate choice to write an app that refuses to run if you have installed non-Google apps. It needs code written to run checks. It even lists the apps I have.

> Many websites are giving up Firefox support, and Firefox adoption is much higher than F-Droid.

Not hat I have noticed.

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