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> Easy, mandate that any UI changes be revertable for the life of the product, or until the company goes bankrupt I'm aware people are annoyed with big UI over

> Easy, mandate that any UI changes be revertable for the life of the product, or until the company goes bankrupt I'm aware people are annoyed with big UI overhauls that seemingly do nothing, but I don't think you understand what it would take to support what you wrote. You're describing something that gets exponentially harder to maintain as a product ages. It's completely prohibitive to small businesses. How many UI changes do you think are made in a year for a young product? One that is constantly getting calls from clients to add this or that? Should a company support 100 different versions of their app? I understand a small handful of companies occasionally allow you to use old UI, but those are cases where the functionality hasn't changed much. If you were to actually mandate this, it would make a lot of UIs worse, not better. As much as people want to act like there's a clear separation, a lot of UI controls are present or absent based on what business logic your server can do. If you are forced to support an old UI that does something the company cannot do anymore, you are forcing broken or insecure functionality. And this would be in the name of something nobody outside of Hackernews would even use. Most people are not aware there is an old.reddit.com.

anonymouskimmer 11mo ago
There are a couple of ways you can do this: 1) Have this law only apply B2C. 2) Stop having rolling feature updates except on an opt-in basis. It used to be that when I bought an operating system or a program it stayed bought, and only updated if I actively went out and bought an update. Rolling security updates are still a good idea, and if they break UI functionality then let the end customer know so that they can make the decision on whether or not to update. For hosted software, such as Google office, is it really that much more difficult to host multiple versions of the office suite? I can see issues if people are collaborating, but if newer file formats can be used in older software with a warning that some features may not be saved or viewable, then the same can be done with a collaborative document vis-a-vis whatever version of the software is opening the document. My wife recently went 0patch and some other programs to cover her Win10 when Microsoft stopped updating it. She still got force updated two updates having to do with patching errors in Windows' ESU feature that blocked people from signing up for the 1-year of ESUs. She let those updates happen without trying to figure out a way to block them as they have no other impact on her operating system, but it would have been nice if Microsoft have been serious about ending the updates when it said it was. I am not a programmer, but come on. This was done in the past with far less computational ability.
- CamperBob2 11mo ago
  This entire subthread is full of people missing the point: no removing features. You can add them, you can even move them, but you don't get to take back something you already sold me, unless I also get to take back the money I gave you. Really not super interested in excuses and whining. Either support the features you sold me, or refund my money. It really is that simple... and it really should be the law.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - Capricorn2481 11mo ago
    You can wish the thread was about that, but that's a completely different conversation, and you're the first to bring it up. I haven't seen any excuses for it. I don't like when I have something simple like an export tool in my app and it's suddenly gone. But the question is how do you define what a feature is in networked apps? If you play an online game with a sniper rifle that one-shots people, and the developers nerf it, have they taken a feature from you? But everyone else loved the nerf? How do we support you and the players? Let you continue one-shotting them? If the app you're paying for could message other users, but now they can block you, is the company supposed to give you a refund because now you can't message some users?
    - CamperBob2 11mo ago
      Good questions. I could argue that the game rules can reasonably include clauses such as, "We can adjust weapon/defense parameters at any time." But the addition of a blocklist feature is a bit harder to hand-wave away because it could be said to be economically damaging to spammers. I would say yes, if the ability to message everybody is advertised as a feature, the company would need to refund the spammers (and kick them off.) Hopefully the company will learn to provide clearer terms of service next time. In general I think the best answer to your objections is to require companies to specify up front exactly what features are being sold, and for how long they are guaranteed to be available. The onus would then be on the consumer to evaluate the list of guaranteed features against their wants and needs. Consumers would hopefully learn, over time, not to buy products that don't provide these guarantees up front. Right now what they (we) are learning is not to trust anything with an Internet connection, because of abuses from a small number of prominent bad actors. Which is unfortunate.

anonymouskimmer 11mo ago

There are a couple of ways you can do this: 1) Have this law only apply B2C. 2) Stop having rolling feature updates except on an opt-in basis. It used to be that when I bought an operating system or a program it stayed bought, and only updated if I actively went out and bought an update. Rolling security updates are still a good idea, and if they break UI functionality then let the end customer know so that they can make the decision on whether or not to update. For hosted software, such as Google office, is it really that much more difficult to host multiple versions of the office suite? I can see issues if people are collaborating, but if newer file formats can be used in older software with a warning that some features may not be saved or viewable, then the same can be done with a collaborative document vis-a-vis whatever version of the software is opening the document. My wife recently went 0patch and some other programs to cover her Win10 when Microsoft stopped updating it. She still got force updated two updates having to do with patching errors in Windows' ESU feature that blocked people from signing up for the 1-year of ESUs. She let those updates happen without trying to figure out a way to block them as they have no other impact on her operating system, but it would have been nice if Microsoft have been serious about ending the updates when it said it was. I am not a programmer, but come on. This was done in the past with far less computational ability.

CamperBob2 11mo ago
This entire subthread is full of people missing the point: no removing features. You can add them, you can even move them, but you don't get to take back something you already sold me, unless I also get to take back the money I gave you. Really not super interested in excuses and whining. Either support the features you sold me, or refund my money. It really is that simple... and it really should be the law.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- Capricorn2481 11mo ago
  You can wish the thread was about that, but that's a completely different conversation, and you're the first to bring it up. I haven't seen any excuses for it. I don't like when I have something simple like an export tool in my app and it's suddenly gone. But the question is how do you define what a feature is in networked apps? If you play an online game with a sniper rifle that one-shots people, and the developers nerf it, have they taken a feature from you? But everyone else loved the nerf? How do we support you and the players? Let you continue one-shotting them? If the app you're paying for could message other users, but now they can block you, is the company supposed to give you a refund because now you can't message some users?
  - CamperBob2 11mo ago
    Good questions. I could argue that the game rules can reasonably include clauses such as, "We can adjust weapon/defense parameters at any time." But the addition of a blocklist feature is a bit harder to hand-wave away because it could be said to be economically damaging to spammers. I would say yes, if the ability to message everybody is advertised as a feature, the company would need to refund the spammers (and kick them off.) Hopefully the company will learn to provide clearer terms of service next time. In general I think the best answer to your objections is to require companies to specify up front exactly what features are being sold, and for how long they are guaranteed to be available. The onus would then be on the consumer to evaluate the list of guaranteed features against their wants and needs. Consumers would hopefully learn, over time, not to buy products that don't provide these guarantees up front. Right now what they (we) are learning is not to trust anything with an Internet connection, because of abuses from a small number of prominent bad actors. Which is unfortunate.