> "Phoning home" let's them know which features are being used and need to be maintained
This is part of the reason modern software is often crap. It gets sanded down to only the most used features, screwing over anyone with a slightly niche use case in the process.
I think Firefox would be more "crap"py if every feature at least one of its users wanted was included. The binary size and startup time would suffer, new feature development would slow to a crawl as every change becomes more difficult, and the interface would be clogged with things I don't want.
I think the situation is more complex than you're asserting. Unless a program has stopped development, it is not a product -- it is an ongoing work that's more akin to a service being provided by the developers. UI changes, bugfixes, refactors, and etc mean that existing features are not zero-cost to the developers. I understand that it's frustrating to lose niche features, but that's a symptom of other complexities, not a cause-free act of foolishness by developers.
This is part of the reason modern software is often crap. It gets sanded down to only the most used features, screwing over anyone with a slightly niche use case in the process.