[imtringued]

I agree. Bad UI is not a barrier. After spending 3 weeks with FreeCAD I got used to all the weirdness. The hardest problem was finding good teaching resources and actually going over them. All you really need is a clear path for people who want to become kernel maintainers. If you rely on random luck it's obviously going to be difficult and nowadays there are more closed platforms than ever so less people even get to throw their dice.