Finding high quality libraries that are suitable for desktop / mobile distribution is currently very difficult.

I'd like to use DuckDB to remotely query Parquet. Unfortunately I can't use it in an iOS app because I'd have to work around the dynamic loading of extensions and bundle OpenSSL to support Httpfs in a static build. I'm building my own library instead.

That's just one example. I'd like to use certain LGPL licensed libraries but I can't because the legal risks are too high, as is the cognitive load in dealing with license uncertainty.

Neither of these things are an issue for web-apps.

I think the economics for local-first software could really work out for businesses that use significant compute. Cloud-compute is not cheap and comes with significant financial tail-risk.