[webwright]

Designers are used to a top-down approach. i.e. They create a design (a full-on design spec with waterfall or a UI improvement/iteration). They like to have design authority. And, honestly, democratic design is generally pretty awful.

Devs generally get involved with OSS to make a different and to build something that THEY want to have (not to serve the the average user). Devs tend to be the "managers" of OSS projects.

So the big question is: When there is a disagreement about user experience in an open-source project, who wins? Who has authority? Obviously, you shoot for consensus, but it often is hard to achieve. Whem you can't achieve consensus in normal software development, a manager will usually pull rank and say, "Well, it feels like a design decision. Let's err on the side of going with our UX designer and the other people who agree with him/her".

I've never done design for an open-source project, but I'd wager that it's pretty democratic with a strong bias towards what the programmers want (which often don't jibe with what the designer wants).