Surely if you made browns any lighter you wouldn't even be able to feel the keys?
The thought is that a lighter spring will make the tactile bump more noticeable. This is clearly demonstrated by putting a very heavy spring into a brown (feels linear) or clear (feels like a brown, but very heavy).
I'm pretty sure you are right. I was thinking along the same lines the other days, when I was experimenting with a clear and brown switches sampler.
I put a little bit too much grease in the switches. I use medium thickness grease to silence Cherry MX switches (only the non clicky ones), and it was my first time using this particular grease.
The switches had a little too much grease on the sliders, and it makes them feel heavier (the grease works against the pressure of your finger). As a side effect, the tactile bump was undoubtedly less noticeable.
On the brown switch, it had almost disappeared, while on the clear it felt like a brown's bump.
It must have been discussed already, but when Cherry created the clear switch my guess is that they just wanted a brown with more tactile bump. A stronger spring inside was not the initial plan.
But they probably noticed that depending on the batch quality, some switches would get stuck in the depressed position, especially when there are molding defaults on the slider's bump. To avoid any issue I think that they decided to put a stronger spring inside.
But maybe 99.5% of clears, and browns also, would work just fine with a lighter spring. We are not limited by Cherry's manufacturing constraints, as we can test all our switches one by one, so we can definitely try a lighter spring in browns. If a switch gets stuck, it should be fairly easy to file & lube the bump to fix it.
I think a 30-35g brown switch would be very interesting. But I have not tried this yet.
