While I believe some of the (App|Play Store) requirements with DUN numbers and such are overkill and unnecessary, I also agree that there’s maybe a bit too much of a tendency for devs (commercial and indie alike) to take advantage of less restrictive means of distribution to “dump and run”, where they toss a binary over the wall and forget the project even exists for long stretches of time, even as bugs and vulnerabilities accumulate.
This worked alright in the 90s and to a more limited extent in the 2000s, but from the 2010s onward it’s become more and more untenable except for the most simplistic of software, especially when it comes to anything dealing with the internet or externally sourced files. Regular maintenance and updates are an unavoidable fact of life for devs.
So I’m kind of two minds here. Lower resistance/barrier to entry can be good in terms of encouraging participation, but it also inevitably means a lot more neglected projects sitting around rusting. If there’s no effort to control that, platforms can easily become filled with rusty half-functional apps. The way that Apple/Google are attempting to do this is not great however because it’s too oriented towards companies.
This worked alright in the 90s and to a more limited extent in the 2000s, but from the 2010s onward it’s become more and more untenable except for the most simplistic of software, especially when it comes to anything dealing with the internet or externally sourced files. Regular maintenance and updates are an unavoidable fact of life for devs.
So I’m kind of two minds here. Lower resistance/barrier to entry can be good in terms of encouraging participation, but it also inevitably means a lot more neglected projects sitting around rusting. If there’s no effort to control that, platforms can easily become filled with rusty half-functional apps. The way that Apple/Google are attempting to do this is not great however because it’s too oriented towards companies.