Software bloat is a term used to describe the tendency of newer computer programs to have a larger installation footprint, or have many unnecessary features that are not used by end users, or just generally use more system resources than necessary, while offering little or no benefit to its users. Bloatware, or foistware, is also used to describe software that comes pre-installed on a computer when it's bought, mostly consisting of time-limited trials or feature-lacking basic or "beginner" versions.
Causes
Software developers involved in the industry during the 1970s had severe limitations on disk space and memory. Every byte and clock cycle counted, and much work went into fitting the programs into available resources.
This situation has now reversed. Resources are perceived as cheap, and rapidity of coding and headline features for marketing are seen as priorities.[1] In part, this is because technological advances have since multiplied processing capacity and storage density by orders of magnitude, while reducing the relative costs by similar orders of magnitude (see Moore's Law). Additionally, the spread of computers through all levels of business and home life has produced a software industry many times larger than it was in the 1970s.
Finally, software development tools and approaches often result in changes throughout a program to accommodate each feature, leading to a large-scale inclusion of code which affects the main operation of the software, and is required in order to support functions that themselves may be only rarely used. In particular, the advances in resources available has led to tools which allow easier development of code, with less priority given to end efficiency.
Another cause of bloat is independently competing standards and products, which can create a demand for integration. There are now more operating systems, browsers, protocols, and storage formats than there were before, causing bloat in programs due to interoperability issues. For example, a program that once could only save in text format is now demanded to save in HTML, XML, XLS, CSV, PDF, DOC, and other formats.
Niklaus Wirth has summed up the situation in Wirth's Law, which states that software speed is decreasing more quickly than hardware speed is increasing.
In his 2001 essay Strategy Letter IV: Bloatware and the 80/20 Myth[2], Joel Spolsky argues that while 80% of the users only use 20% of the features (a variant on the Pareto principle), each one uses different features. Thus, "lite" software editions turn out to be useless for most, as they miss the one or two special features that are present in the "bloated" version. Spolsky sums the article with a quote by Jamie Zawinski referring to Netscape:
"Convenient though it would be if it were true, Mozilla is not big because it's full of useless crap. Mozilla is big because your needs are big. Your needs are big because the Internet is big. There are lots of small, lean web browsers out there that, incidentally, do almost nothing useful. But being a shining jewel of perfection was not a goal when we wrote Mozilla."[3]
Software bloat may also be a symptom of the second-system effect, described by Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man-Month.
Examples
Microsoft Windows has been accused of being bloated. For example, with reference to Windows Vista, Microsoft engineer Eric Traut commented that "A lot of people think of Windows as this large, bloated operating system, and that's maybe a fair characterization, I have to admit.... [but] at its core, the kernel, and the components that make up the very core of the operating system, is actually pretty streamlined.".[10] Former PC World editor Ed Bott has expressed skepticism, noting that almost every single operating system that Microsoft has ever sold had been criticized as 'bloated' when it first came out; even those now regarded as the exact opposite, such as MS-DOS.[11]
CD- and DVD-burning applications such as Nero Burning ROM have become criticized for being bloated.[12] Superfluous features not specifically tailored to the end user are sometimes installed by default through express setups.
Other examples are a result of time, where programmers simply bolt on new features leaving remnants of old code behind. A very good example is the Adobe PDF reader which over time has gained many arguably unnecessary features and with each revision become more cumbersome. Features alone do not define bloatware but when you compare Adobe with its download managers, forced & frequent updates and filesize of 36 MB to the virtually identical foxit reader with a simple download and install of 5.11 MB the bloatware argument becomes clearer. Foxit is not the smallest PDF reader either, which has also come under fire for getting too big even when it is under 14% of the size of Adobe PDF Reader.
Alternatives to software bloat
Some applications, such as Mozilla Firefox and Winamp, package additional functionality in plug-ins, extensions or add-ons which are downloaded separately from the main application. These can be created by the software developer and often by third parties. Plug-ins enable extra functionality which might have otherwise been packaged in the main program.
Allowing extensions reduces the space used on any one machine, because even though the application plus the "plug-in interface" plus all the plug-ins is larger than the same functionality compiled into one monolithic application, it allows each user to install only the particular add-on features required by that user, rather than force every user to install a much larger monolithic application that includes 100% of the available features.
Open source software may use a similar technique using preprocessor directives to selectively include features at compile time. This is easier to implement than a plugin system, but has the obvious disadvantage that a user who wants a specific set of features must compile the program from source.
Sometimes software becomes bloated because of "creeping featurism"[13] (Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment), also called bullet-point engineering. One way to reduce that kind of bloat is described by the Unix philosophy: "Write programs that do one thing and do it well".
See also
References
