this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2024
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I think they mean it doesn't feel like it was designed in 1999
In my experience, FOSS apps are not the alternative, they are what any app should be. They look, feel and work better than any paid app, yet people continue to call them "alternatives"
They're often "alternatives" to significantly more polished and popular apps that have names that people actually recognize. That's why they're called alternatives.
You could just as easily say the mainstream app is an "alternative" to the FOSS one, and it still doesn't mean either one is necessarily better than the other, but most people wouldn't know WTF you're talking about.
Lack of polish stems from open source apps having engineers write the code without necessarily having input from a UX designer, would you think?
Meanwhile if you have a paid app, you can use your budget to hire UX/QA etc.?
I mean you can attribute it to any number of things. Most of it being probably lack of funding.
Someone or several someones are volunteering their time to create this, and may not take the additional time required to make it "polished", and only enough time to make it functional.
Heroes, they are. <3 FOSS devs
Any idea how many UX designers help with open source? KDE looks way better than windows (IMHO) and having used it for 20 years I just seriously wonder why people pay hundreds of dollars for windows crap while they can have something better for free