That depends on goals and what they're willing to do to accomplish those goals; it's quite reasonable to not want to stop being open source over this and to try asking nicely.
> I think something that is worth discussing is the model of the Linux distribution that leads to poor user experience like this[...]. It's come up many times among criticisms of Linux ecosystems and distributing user software, but it doesn't seem like the message lands well.
Because it's not universally viewed as a bug. Plenty of folks explicitly want to download software from their distro's official repos, get something that's specifically tested (and if need be, patched) to play nice with the system, and stay on a known stable version. Because the flip side of this complaint is distro maintainers pointing out that if you downloaded random 3rd party software and added it to your system, they're no longer capable of assuring you that the result will work.
> It's remarkable how much easier it is to write software on Linux yet equally remarkable how much more annoying it is to reliably distribute it, compared to say MacOS .apps, the iOS/Android app stores, and to a lesser extent Windows. I don't think there has to be a tradeoff here between Freedom and UX.
Some folks would argue that it's harder because you shouldn't be doing it; https://drewdevault.com/2021/09/27/Let-distros-do-their-job.... . But if you want to go that way, there's always flatpak/docker/snaps to go around the distro and ship directly to end users.