Oct 15 2007
Farewell, FileZilla
What used to be a fast, efficient FTP client for Windows is now a lame, crippled FTP client for Windows and Linux.
I used FileZilla all the time to transfer files to and from my website(s). And, weighing in at just over 3MB, it was a compact program, considering the number of features it supported.
But the developers of FileZilla just had to mess with it. For “version 3.0″ of the program, they decided to completely rewrite it from the ground up, for the sole purpose of making the program “cross-platform.” And so we see yet another example of great software going astray.
The obvious point is that Linux already has plenty of FTP clients! Anyone who uses Linux already has a favorite FTP client, and would not be eagerly anticipating the release of FileZilla for Linux, making the entire effort marginally useful.
And for Windows users, the rewrite of FileZilla came at a devastating price. The package now weighs in at over 10MB (unacceptable for a simple FTP client), and its user interface is now painfully sluggish, not to mention buggy, and actually less feature-rich than before.
Is “software bloat” an inevitable destination in the lifetime of a program? Like a red-giant star that expands when it runs out of fuel, is all useful software destined to end up a bloated monstrosity?