Opensource doesn't need designers, there are plenty of those (real designers, and programmers with decent design skills). What it needs is focus. The main prob

Opensource doesn't need designers, there are plenty of those (real designers, and programmers with decent design skills). What it needs is focus. The main problem with opensource UIs is the lack of attention to integration issues and detail, which results in a (serious) lack of polish. The proprietary model has the advantage that you can put someone in charge of this. Someone that will order people to polish stuff up. Opensource projects can't do this. Everyone does its own thing, and can't be bothered to do the boring work, or they'll leave. The mistake here is thinking that uniformization fixes the problem. Well, guess what, none of the successful UIs are uniform (violation of UI guidelines is the norm on Windows, and Apple also doesn't with increased frequency). But what they don't do is leave applications with misaligned components and such crap.