While I agree they're all attacking the same problems, ultimately they all have exactly the same problem when it comes to code: no designs, no docs, and no tool

While I agree they're all attacking the same problems, ultimately they all have exactly the same problem when it comes to code: no designs, no docs, and no tooling. The point you make about Linux systems being bags of Lego is interesting. That's exactly how it is supposed to be. Unfortunately, the projects we're talking about don't compose well -- they're more like Duplo than Lego because often times they subsume whole feature sets into one huge monolithic block. Huge lumps of code exist in GNOME and KDE and systemd and dbus that just simply have no business being in there. Dbus and systemd especially fail at the whole design angle.