Actual good UI/UX design isn't trivial and it tends to require a tight feedback loop between testers, designers, implementers, and users.
A lot of FOSS simply doesn't have the resources to do that.
There are other times I want cropping or something similar, but it's really only 10-30% of the time. If people want to have a more custom workflow they can use an advanced UI
But many other projects, perhaps the majority, that is not their goal. By devs for devs, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that.
Pleasing customers is incredibly difficult and a never-ending treadmill. If it's not the goal then it's not a failure.
I'm not disagreeing with your basic take, but I think this part is a little more subtle.
I'd argue that 80% of users (by raw user count) do want roughly the same 20% of functionality, most of the time.
The problem in FOSS is that average user in the FOSS ecosystem is not remotely close to the profile of that 80%. The average FOSS user is part of the 1% of power users. They actively want something different and don't even understand the mindset of the other 80% of users.
When someone comes along to a FOSS project and honestly tries to rebuild it for the 80% of users, they often end up getting a lot of hate from the established FOSS community because they just have totally different needs. It's like they don't even speak the same language.
Some FOSS projects attempt something like this, but it can become a self-reinforcing feedback loop: When you're only testing on current users, you're selecting for people who already use the software. People who already use the software were not scared away by the interface. So the current users tend to prefer the current interface.
Big software companies have the resources to gather (and pay) people for user studies to see what works and what does not for people who haven't seen the software before, or at least don't have any allegiances. If you only ever get feedback from people who have been using the software for a decade, they're going to tell you the UI must not change because they know exactly how to use it by now.
It was something like:
- almost everybody only uses about 20% of the features of Word
- everybody's 20% is different, but
- ~80% of the 20% is common to most users.
- on the other hand, the remaining 20% of the 20% is widely distributed and covers basically all of the product.
So if you made a version of Word with 16% of its feature set you would almost make everybody happy. But really, nobody would be happy. There's no small feature set that makes most people happy.
Projects like GNOME, Elementary, Blender, Krita, KDE Plasma, Penpot, and MuseScore seem to attract contributions from designers.
I suspect it's because designers are like any other open source contributor: they want to work on projects that they use themselves and where their contributions will be appreciated.
How many of them are paid? I know MuseScore, Penpot, and Blender have paid for almost all of their design work (because they have paid staff)
Not just a relevancy problem, it's much easier to get free development work in OSS than design work. It's a decades-long problem.
I'm still skeptical that it's primarily about pay. I know many designers who do pro-bono design work, just not for FOSS. They typically work on nonprofit websites, community newsletters, contribute game mods/assets, work on civic tech, even band posters.