The convenience and knowledge barriers are too high for most people. It's pretty straightforward for folks with tech subject matter expertise, but for most othe

The convenience and knowledge barriers are too high for most people. It's pretty straightforward for folks with tech subject matter expertise, but for most others, it's just not worth figuring out what they need to know, then getting all of the prerequisite knowledge that lets them learn that, then worrying about screwing it up, or maybe relying on someone else for basic operations, etc. It's often tough for developers to see this for the same reason it's tough to write documentation-- reasoning about a beginner's perspective is a specific skill that takes study and practice. That's why software companies that need financially stable products hire technical writers and interface designers, and it's a place where FOSS really struggles. For example, Mastodon's active userbase has dropped 50% since its peak during the beginning of the Musk/Twitter debacle... even for the ones brave enough to plunge in head-first, it was too much technical resistance compared to the more straightforward alternatives that they had already abandoned. I think it was a missed opportunity.