@jeromechoo singular devs or small teams of programmers maintaining projects. The goal is usually to get it working and not fuss too much about the UI/UX.
When we think of polished, commercial software, there’s usually a designer, a product lead, devs and a whole infrastructure behind it. FOSS is way more ad hoc.
I think a good counter-example is the indie app developer. There are a bunch of great, well-designed mobile apps built by solo devs or small teams.
@robcee right on with the counter example. I bought multiple apps from @rizzi who is a renaissance artist of software. Beautiful apps with no bugs. I will buy anything he makes.
Honestly I don't personally need #FOSS. It's just a great way to discover indie apps.
@jeromechoo another possibility is cross platform development is hard, and most projects pick an existing cross platform toolkit for their UI. Most of them look kind of funky compared to a natively built app.
@robcee I can only think of one example of an amazing cross platform FOSS app — Voyager. It has the advantage of building on the design of Apollo though. Which was also designed by a solo dev..... :thinking_rotate:
@jeromechoo I was thinking more about cross platform desktop apps, but that looks cool. Apollo was a great app and @christianselig deserves a lot of props for what he built.
I hadn’t seen Voyager before. Looks like a cool project. Also guessed it was React Native before I looked at the source. Ironically, I think there are more XP mobile toolkits than there are desktop ones these days. Building something that looks good on macOS and Windows and Linux is hard.
@robcee@jeromechoo So many valid points across the thread and by Rob. If I were to add smth, am I wrong in assuming one more aspect of it all? The fact that there's simply not enough incentive to get UI/UX focused folks in? Some OSS make money, most don't, so while functionality is often prioritized - the 'polished look and feel' comes at a monitory cost which isn't there. I could be wrong here but this is what popped in my mind, did this make sense?
@pheonix@jeromechoo I think it's more than just money. A well designed app is designed first and implemented to a spec. Then iterated on with the help of the designer and product folks. It's more than just UI, it's about the whole workflow and interaction. The "experience".
Not a lot of open source projects start with that design mentality up front. Some devs are better at design than others, but it's a rare developer that can do it all themselves.
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