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It takes a lot of time and energy to refine and maintain a minimalistic interface. You are intentionally narrowing the audience. If you are an open source developer with limited time you probably aren't going to invest in that.

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That’s one of the great things about the approach demonstrated in the post. The developers of Handbrake don’t need to invest any time or energy in a minimalist interface. They can continue to maintain their feature-rich software exactly as it is. Meanwhile, there is also a simple, easy front end available for people who need or want it.

I think There’s a survivorship problem though. This software needs to be marketed and maintained to stay in the zeitgeist. It would have to compete with competitors that do more than just the simple things.

I think it’s essentially survivorship bias. The simple applications don’t get traction and later get abandoned.

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