Not my politics nor bigotry, thank you. I'm just thankful
that some entity came up with a generally usable standard,
rather than 20+ competitors in the software market all
rolling their own incompatible or non-exportable data store.
I haven't checked recently, but for a while there was one vendor
marketing family tree software in big box stores that used a
proprietary and non-exportable data format. People would buy the
simple package, work on their tree, and want to migrate, only to be
put off by: "you'll have to re-enter your data."
As for non-support of non-traditional family structures,
I'm not surprised that a conservative religious entity
motivated by research into historical vital records
tends to focus on the typical needs for its own users.
Many of the rest of the user population benefit from a generally
usable (and I'll agree, imperfect) data standard, without which
this field would be less interesting and less profitable.
There are a bunch of challenges for software developers in
regard to traditional family structures of many kinds,
generally showing that real life is often more complicated
than simple tree-oriented data-structures might suggest.
Divorce & step-parents are fairly well handled, but consider how to
store, display, & represent explicit and implicit relationships among:
unmarried persons living together
adoptive parents
egg donors
surrogate mothers
I expect that software and standards will evolve as real life
does, but I don't expect the LDS to be putting their effort
into areas that they likely do not see as benefitting them,
or that they see as controversial for many of their members.
On the other hand, an entrepreneur could produce a set of patches or
extensions to GEDCOM that addressed the more complicated areas, and
provided export into and import from GEDCOM or an extended format.
I haven't checked recently, but for a while there was one vendor marketing family tree software in big box stores that used a proprietary and non-exportable data format. People would buy the simple package, work on their tree, and want to migrate, only to be put off by: "you'll have to re-enter your data."
As for non-support of non-traditional family structures, I'm not surprised that a conservative religious entity motivated by research into historical vital records tends to focus on the typical needs for its own users.
Many of the rest of the user population benefit from a generally usable (and I'll agree, imperfect) data standard, without which this field would be less interesting and less profitable.
There are a bunch of challenges for software developers in regard to traditional family structures of many kinds, generally showing that real life is often more complicated than simple tree-oriented data-structures might suggest.
Divorce & step-parents are fairly well handled, but consider how to store, display, & represent explicit and implicit relationships among:
I expect that software and standards will evolve as real life does, but I don't expect the LDS to be putting their effort into areas that they likely do not see as benefitting them, or that they see as controversial for many of their members.On the other hand, an entrepreneur could produce a set of patches or extensions to GEDCOM that addressed the more complicated areas, and provided export into and import from GEDCOM or an extended format.