Ask HN: Why doesn't software have credits screens anymore? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why doesn't software have credits screens anymore?

8 pointsaaronharnly5 comments

In the olden days, desktop apps shipped with credits screens with the names of individual contributors (sometimes in the splash screen, sometimes in the About panel, sometimes hidden in Easter eggs).

Then they went away! I don't know if it was IP concerns, the fact that it gave headhunters a hitlist of people to poach, or just got unwieldy.

Sometimes SaaS apps have a friendly "Team" page on their site with headshots and bio blurbs, which is the closest I think I see nowadays.

Are any of you shipping credits screens in your desktop, mobile, or SaaS apps? If so, why and how? If not, why not? Should it be revived?

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Firefox, for example, has an extensive list at https://www.mozilla.org/credits/ ...

1. I think I don't do it because I want a separate life from the product. I don't really want to encourage people to think they have access to "me". I have a "support" page for that. I value my privacy.

2. Software is rarely written by "one guy" anymore. Its a really complicated thing that might involve contractors, 3rd party libraries, and maybe we don't want to reveal our sources anymore. Credit is a thing that goes far beyond the company's creation of the product. For one product I sell, I do have an Acknowledgments section included in the documentation.

3. Listing developers on the website is fine, that can be changed as staff come and go. But embedding "John Doe" within the About page (desktop app) may not reflect the real people behind the application five years from now. Yes, in some markets, it can last that long before an upgrade.

Maybe it would improve things, maybe it wouldn't, whatever, but that's my reasoning. If something won't improve sales, then I'm not inclined to do it.

Lots of things conspired to kill credit screens.

>The job market for tech went insane, providing companies a disincentive to give developers tools to transfer prestige between companies

>Source control and code review processes improved, making it much harder to hide screens

>Companies are much more security minded, and what seems like a funny joke credits screen someone might add as a prank may be the code surface that gets you or your customers hacked, causing potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

>Modern metrics tracking incentivizes devs to focus on their work objectives rather than working on unrequested bonus features like a credits screen

I’d love to see them return, but the deck seems stacked against.

To some extent it's self-perpuating: you don't do it, because if you look around, it's not the done thing.

There were other mainstays such as borderless splash-screens and tip-of-the-day navigators.

LineageOS ( Android ) :

Settings > About phone > Contributors

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