Maybe you mean visionaries started those projects. Did any remain relevant without significant user and designer input? Standing up an idea well enough to chan

Maybe you mean visionaries started those projects. Did any remain relevant without significant user and designer input? Standing up an idea well enough to change how people see a need is an incredible accomplishment but it's entirely different from single-handedly knowing how to make it work best for people who use it. Or for anybody other than you, really. But underestimating the importance of, or even disdain for deliberate usability work is pervasive in FOSS. Most developers see interfaces as a place to expose the user-facing functionality so people can interact with your software. To a user, the interface is the software. In their estimation, bad interface=bad software. When projects ignore that, they end up making Gimp. You'll have a hard time selecting a sample of serious photo editors where fewer than 80% have tried Gimp— yet maybe %5 use it. Fewer will have heard of the younger commercial Affinity, but more will use it. (edit: obviously pulling those numbers out of my ass but I've been editing photos on computers since the early 90s and do so professionally to this day.) However, in the adjacent and oft-overlapping world of vector art, the FOSS project Inkscape is very, very popular— even among professionals. They aren't hostile to usability changes, actively seek outside interface design perspectives and have a usable application because of it. Inkscape does more good for a broad swath of vector artists because of their good design habits. Gimp has a product enjoyed by open source enthusiasts with light photo editing needs. Free + great enough to generate word of mouth will trump expensive + great + advertising in almost every case.