| The point is that no one will outside of an inconsequentially small group will adopt user-facing free software if it isn't easy to use and if it doesn't have a slick and intuitive UI. Programmers perhaps do not care for this. But everyone else does. A good, competitive UI is non-optional. > [Free Software looks bad] because that's all anyone in particular needs it to be. This is the fundamental disconnect! It's all programmers need it to be. Regular, normal people? They also need it to be fluid, pretty, and intuitive. Yeah, that's a need, not a want, as much as we might wish it otherwise. We might wish that people had the strength of will/whatever to stick with comparatively worse UIs in exchange for freedom, but we know that's not true, and that won't happen. > UI/UX as it is taught in the industry comes hand-in-hand with curation [...] Software freedom accepts that the ugly choice is still a choice. These are not mutually exclusive. UI/UX in free software can come by default as a highly refined and curated experience, with an option to switch things out if you want. --- I agree that there is a fundamental tradeoff in time and resources between implementing "real features" and UI/UX. Even big corporations with billions of dollars to burn struggle with this. But what we need to realize is that UI/UX is a real feature. If our priority is getting more people to adopt OSS, then it needs to be done. If our priority is getting shit done in the short term, well - I guess you can hold off on it. |