[IdiotSavage]

As an outsider, trying to make some UI/UX changes in old open source projects is often extremely energy consuming and difficult. You have to convince all the old hands, who feel it's their project (maybe rightfully so) that the changes are good for new users. Old users will mostly fight any change (don't want to relearn). Many discussions end with "maybe let's make this a setting?". This leads to crappy software with bad defaults, way too many options and nobody will ever use the new settings.

Even though I have a background in UX design, I'm not cut out for this kind of open source work. I've tried.

[greazy]

LibreOffice did a great job of transitioning to an alternative UX and went further to implement not just ribbons but different combinations classic menu with ribbons.

That's the answer IMO, yeah now there's two UX to maintain but it's a step forward.

[tonmoy]

Another outsider, but Krita seem to be doing really well keeping their UX up to date. To the point where I often use it for a lot of stuff meant to be done by GIMP