I read something a long time ago, and it has stuck with me. (I wish I could find the original text, but it has been lost to time.) It went something like this: You should choose software which has developers that think and work the same way you do.

Unfortunately, I am not compatible with the Liferea developer. Liferea is a feed reader for Linux, and there have been several times that it has frustrated me. I disagree with many of the design decisions!

Edd Dumbill once argued that strong opinions allow software projects to reach their greatest potential. This is where Liferea appears to fall short: its developer, Lars, sometimes adds features simply because other feed readers have similar functionality. For instance, when he added support for "news bins" Lars stated that it's "a feature that can be found in many of the advanced commercial aggregators, which is a good reason to have it too".

This is not to say that Liferea is bad software! There are many other features that have been added that are, quite simply, wonderful. Nonetheless, I see that Liferea does not work the way I think that it should. Spurred on by a blog entry by Richard Hughes, I intend to try other feed readers.