Sometimes You Have To Clean House

Earlier today, Nick Bradbury asked a good question about the features included in free software…

Yesterday I wrote about killing unused features. But what about killing a feature that people do use?

He's talking about FeedDemon, and he really wants to kill a feature that I use every day. As a software developer, however, I understand where he is coming from.

The News Item List in FeedDemon is not the most popular of features and apparently not too many people use it. I have used that feature since day one, but it is now "inactive" by default so many people don't even know about it. As a longtime FeedDemon fan, I use that feature everyday. In fact, removing the news item list would change the way I use FeedDemon, and it would be quite a shock for me to get used to.

As a developer though, I think he should remove it. The feature slows things down and is a pain in the butt for him to maintain. If I was the developer of FeedDemon, I would remove it. If a feature is a drain on the system and would improve overall performance it needs to be pulled for the benefit of the software package.

I recently pulled a few features from Stuffr. It no longer works with Twitter or Pownce, and I pulled the "technorati tagger" because I felt it was no longer adding value to the application.

There are a lot of people saying they will "never use FeedDemon again" if Nick removes the feature and people are really fired up. It's going to be a tough decision for him, but whatever he decides, I will still be a FeedDemon fan, and more than likely, I'll be using the product for a long time to come.

Crossposted at The Alligator Pit.