Imposing Software

I have written before about the importance of software that is portable. One great quality of such software is that it avoids being imposing. The ideal software should allow us to use whatever stack of software we want without forcing a bunch of unwanted dependencies onto us, otherwise it becomes what I want to coin as imposing software.

An example of imposing software would be a bank authenticator that is limited to only a small set of platforms. A more insidious example of such software would be collaborative software or software where, because others use it, you must use it too. This can be Google Docs, which in order to collaborate with others forces you to use a web browser, which in turn forces you to use a specific set of software and hardware, which in turn can make your hardware obsolete. Another example is iMessage, which in a group where not everyone uses iPhone, converts the group chat into a downgraded experience where images are of lower quality. Android users in such a group chat are shamed with green message bubbles.

- Marc