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fainpul | 9 days ago

Well said. It seems to me, many FOSS projects suffer from long time contributors which are extremely conservative and don't like any kind of change. Hence every new or improved feature becomes merely a setting (which barely anybody will discover) which is not enabled by default. The UX does only worsen this way because old cruft coexists with its replacement, settings grow fast, the combinatorial explosion of all feature combinations produces tons of bugs and new users will always be turned off by the first use experience.

To make the necessary overhaul, someone with the "power to decide" is needed, which is somewhat incompatible with unpaid open source development. I think this video about Audacity's redesign is informative in this regard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYM3TWf_G38

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freeopinion|9 days ago

Please be careful about voicing generic complaints in a discussion of a specific product. IMO, FreeCAD 1.0 took some huge leaps in ergonomics. I was surprised about how much work had been done. The workers behind FreeCAD don't deserve lazy sniping that doesn't even apply to their creation.

My guess is that they might appreciate specific criticism. It would probably help focus the work they are doing. But don't generalize them to have all the usual problems everybody else always seems to have. That isn't very helpful to anybody.

fainpul|9 days ago

But I mean it. In my opinion, all the criticism of my post also applies to FreeCAD, not just other projects. Look what brought this up: a hidden feature someone wanted but wasn't aware of.

I'm not trying to blame anyone. I think this is a structural problem with FOSS projects in general (and it also applies to FreeCAD specifically).

skydhash|9 days ago

> To make the necessary overhaul, someone with the "power to decide" is needed,

FOSS is a doer-cracy. If you have a pain point, patch it, and it will go away.

fainpul|9 days ago

It seems like you've only read this half-sentence before replying.

What you say is part of the problem. It leads to "patchwork software" without a clear vision.

the__alchemist|9 days ago

I find the experience not to be as straightforward as you imply, forking aside.