The lack of good compensation for designers under FOSS is one subject that needs some serious attention for making the movement dominant and succesful.
Under this assumption, I recently came across this article or blog by Koos Looijesteijn and got intrigued by his thoughts. These are some of the excerpts from his blog and I want all devs to read it and enlighten me on this topic.
“It could have been so great, but why is it so ugly and difficult to use?” people trying open source software wonder. “Why aren’t designers contributing more?” developers complain. “Why don’t developers include us more?” designers lament.
So I guess when people ask why FOSS is badly designed, they mean software that:
Is free to use
Has open source code
Has a user base that doesn’t primarily consist of software developers
Has a GUI
Is mainly developed by volunteers
But with the historical context above, I now accept the situation we’re in. It’s not a matter of developers acting just a little friendlier or designers acting a little less egoistically. We’d have a very different expectation of UI design today if it weren’t for all the money that was poured into software design. FOSS is great, but a well-designed UI can be the difference between a user base of a few hundred programmers and one of hundreds of millions of people.
Well-designed UIs don’t just emerge from spontaneous volunteer contributions. A designer could spend most of their working time volunteering and making a great design for a FOSS project. But then still there needs to be a structure and a collaboration process wherein that design is used.
What do you say?
Is it a reality that Open Source Software is badly designed?
How do you view the role of designers in FOSS?