It used to be the case that writing software applications was the preserve of the few; people with beards, long hair, bad skin and who wore glasses and sandals and spent long hours locked inside organisations we called software companies.
The progressive democratization of software development over the last forty years - and which has accelerated exponentially over the last ten years - means that today anyone and any organisation can build software applications with the slightest commercial business case or, indeed, forethought.
Which is why today we have app stores packed with hundreds of thousands of apps which I think is, ultimately, a good thing because some of those apps will be truly exceptional and woudn't have existed before software democratization. But it also means we have to put up with the hundreds of thousands of shockingly mediocre apps that litter app stores. Mediocre in any one or all of the following senses; poor design, usability, function, quality and ultimate purpose.
The old world economic constraints within which traditional software companies previously either survived or prospered was a natural limiting factor which, in the main, prevented mediocre products from seeing the light of day, or if they did they didn't see it for long. Not many software company boards would have likely ever signed off on a Fart App project.
And so while big old software companies might have unconsiously thrown off their once burgeoning appetites for innovation over time, and maybe their tendencies towards laziness and greed grew, they at least ensured there was some sliver of commercial cohesion and structure, a common sense check which products and would-be competitors had to pass to qualify to take part.
But like all dictatorships however benevolent, the prospect of revolution is always lurking around the corner. They can try to quell the insurgency, or they can plead to hold back the swelling tide, but the chances are they're done anyway. If not today, then soon and by countless disconnected hands of a mindless army of software developers borne atop the shoulders of today's new Fart App economics.