The simple question came up between myself and a friend of mine who is a designer: "Why don't designers seem to dedicate the same time to OSS projects that engi

The simple question came up between myself and a friend of mine who is a designer: "Why don't designers seem to dedicate the same time to OSS projects that engineers do?" Neither of us really had a good answer to that, but also neither of us expected OSS engineers to out-design designers in the general case. Basically, lack of designer input to OSS projects for whatever reason was problematic. Perhaps it's because engineers don't solicit designer input. Perhaps it's because by the time the engineer-only project arrives on a designer's desk, it's too ugly to consider. Perhaps it's because designers don't have the same OSS ethos. Perhaps it's an illusion, and designers do give a lot of input to OSS projects, but the input is bad. Or a combination of a variety of factors.