Gnome 2 and KDE 3 were IMHO the best - well designed for usability, traditional, consistent, with good guidelines. I think those prove that it can be in OSS. H

Gnome 2 and KDE 3 were IMHO the best - well designed for usability, traditional, consistent, with good guidelines. I think those prove that it can be in OSS. However, I don't think users care that much about consistency, unfortunately (even though I think it's important aspect of design). Look at web, every website is different and it's considered a good thing by designers. There is no consistency on web and yet desktop apps struggle to compete.