[dylz]

IMO, a lot of F/OSS seems to really ignore the UX/UI part. It doesn't seem to be just XMPP-community.

For another example, Mumble (VoIP) is effectively leader in bandwidth, quality, encryption, and extensibility - but have you ever tried to teach an end user gamer or otherwise about certificates, checking cert fingerprints, backing up their client certs so they don't lose admin privileges on servers, it's more or less a UX/onboarding clusterfuck.

[Flowdalic]

I don't think that aspect is intentionally ignored, it's just that most FOSS projects are seriously understaffed, and the UX/UI part is not a high priority item compared to getting it to work.

[joepie91_]

I think that's a mistake, though. Users often become contributors, and by offering a substandard UX, you remain forever understaffed - you don't gain the momentum, because you're not attracting users.

UX should be a high-priority item.

[mahyarm]

I guess thats when you build the client with good UX and charge for it. But it would have to be code under a license that is friendly to that kind of extension.

[nickpsecurity]

Good idea on charging for better interface. License might not be an issue, though. A cheat that many use is to run the GPL code in its own process, the proprietary one in its, and use a high-speed IPC method to marshal data between them. You can even do this as a pipeline with a proprietary UI on front, complex GPL in middle, and proprietary middleware as last step. Many models.