> Firefox, the Linux kernel, Wordpress, Rails (and here I'm specifically mentioning infrastructure, as APIs need good design too). I can't speak for the Linux

> Firefox, the Linux kernel, Wordpress, Rails (and here I'm specifically mentioning infrastructure, as APIs need good design too). I can't speak for the Linux kernel, but Firefox isn't a shining example of great design. It was back in its early days, when it was incredibly simple, but now it's place is as the complex browser that's extendable in any way. At the cost of ease of use. Chrome is now the browser that has opinions and does it right. > Personally I hate the Gnome desktop because it doesn't have the features I want. The OS X desktop has tons more features and attracts many more users. The OS X desktop is fairly feature-light, and definitely opinionated. Notice the lack of support for themes or colour customisations in OS X. The dock is at the bottom, the menu bar is at the top. Because Apple say so. And I trust they know what they're doing. That being said, Apple's shift in focus to iOS can be felt when you look at Lion. Last time I made a serious attempt to use Gnome was a year or two back - and it was clear that there was a lack of decision making. Nobody's got a strong enough vision to just decide what typeface the UI should be in, or how the menus should be structured, or whether running apps should be at the top or the bottom of the screen. They defer these decisions to the poor users, saying "it's customisable, make it exactly how you want!", when in reality, you end up with an unpredictable and difficult to use product that nobody understands, and can be got into broken states easily. "Oops, I removed the Applications menu". That kind of broken. > It's also not the job of the designer to cut features. His job is to create an interface to make those features easy to use. Not true. This is what I mean by open source doesn't want designers. A good designer will almost certainly simplify your initial idea, cutting all the fluff that's not essential to the product. This is why you need to involve a designer at the very start of the project. A designer who doesn't do this is probably not a good designer.