On Being the Free Alternative

I’ve been thankful for NetNewsWire in 2021. It’s become my main interface with the world of written content. It is simple, clear, and highly functional. It syncs my RSS feeds via iCloud, which save the extra step of needing an external RSS service - which was THE feature that set it apart from other reader apps. Plus its reader view fetching works like a champion.

But this line from the NNW blog gave me a hearty chuckle:

We realize that free and open source apps often do have the mission of mimicking the features of some one or several commercial apps, as if they’re Prometheus bringing features to the common computer user — but that is not our mission.

Having a mission and sticking doggedly to it is somethign to which I aspire for 2022.