It’s even worse, I think. Good UX design looks deceptively easy, but is actually incredibly hard. So hard that a lot of programmers don’t even recognize how terrible they are at it, or how high the skill ceiling actually is. They think UI design is pretty colors and rounded buttons.

In a functioning software company, the managers recognize this skill difference and simply order the developers to implement what the designers suggest. They grumpily do. (It’s obviously not always so stereotypical. I’m exaggerating to make a point.)

In a typical OSS project, no one can give orders. The programmers ignore any good design suggestions because they don’t recognize those, and implement their own crappy ideas instead. Sometimes while arrogantly dunking on the designer who tried to make a contribution. Consequently, UX quality is abysmal, and anyone who could fix that is driven away. I don’t see a solution to this.