Why is open source software so badly designed? | Koos Looijesteijn Skip to content<br>Koos Looijesteijn<br>Website designer in Berlin

I design at ForTomorrow. I’m an immigrant in Berlin, geriatric millennial, edge case, papa.

Mastodon<br>LinkedIn<br>Bluesky<br>Mail<br>“It could have been so great, but why is it so ugly and difficult to use?” people trying open source software wonder. “Why aren’t designers contributing more?” developers complain. “Why don’t developers include us more?” designers lament.

Okay, actually that’s all me. As somebody who uses, designs and develops software, these questions bothered me. But I now believe that asking these questions frames the topic in an unproductive way. Instead, I’d like to ask:

How can volunteer-driven projects become successful?

What’s this clickbait? Did I just completely change the topic? Stay with me to see why this is a better why of looking at it—especially if you have an idea for a FOSS<br>(sidenote:<br>I’ll be using the abbreviation ‘FOSS’ a lot. It refers to free, open source software. Most of that is actually free in the sense that you don’t have to pay to use it. But it usually refers to that license under which the source code of the software is published: free to modify and share. I find the abbreviation isn’t pretty and that it’s a bit pedantic to make a distinction between FOSS and open source software without a free license, but as you’ll see, open source comes in so many shapes and forms, that it makes sense for this post. ) project and want it to be really, really good.

What FOSS are we talking about

When we ask why FOSS software is badly designed, it’s easy to dismiss that question, as the premise is wrong. After all, well-designed, successful FOSS projects exist.

Git for instance. Oh but wait, that’s a command-line interface and I guess we’re talking about software with graphical user interface. Okay, what about Visual Studio Code? Well, that’s not really for end-users! Then what about Firefox? There’s a big, professional organisation behind that.

So I guess when people ask why FOSS is badly designed, they mean software that:

Is free to use

Has open source code

Has a user base that doesn’t primarily consist of software developers

Has a GUI

Is mainly developed by volunteers

I think it’s important to be precise here, because FOSS isn’t some second-tier, ugly alternative for people who can’t afford any better. In fact, there are lots of great FOSS projects that don’t meet the criteria above. Many of them are so essential that without it, your computer wouldn’t work like it does. And you couldn’t have gotten this text on it via the internet either.

Idealist FOSS, the movement

The ‘free’ part of free, open source software refers to its licensing: something that has nothing to do with software in particular. FOSS started as a social philosophy. Here’s how the GNU Project summarizes their view on computing as follows:

Free software means users have the four essential freedoms:

to run the program

to study and change the program in source code form

to redistribute exact copies

to distribute modified versions.

Software differs from material objects—such as chairs, sandwiches, and gasoline—in that it can be copied and changed much more easily. These facilities are why software is useful; we believe a program’s users should be free to take advantage of them, not solely its developer.

The important thing is that nowadays, many projects are open sourced for other reasons. But some people still have the expectation that FOSS makers live that original philosophy, leading to disappointment and incomprehension about what then look like strange development decisions.

There still are people who only want to use FOSS, because they strongly believe in the free software movement. They consider it unethical to support or even use proprietary software. They run Linux on their laptop, refuse to watch Netflix, as it requires them to install a tiny piece of closed source digital rights management software. They love that they have the option to run their own versions of their everything and never have to worry about losing access to their data. I find that laudable, but also very impractical:

Really being strict would mean not using online services or the software embedded in hardware like cameras, elevators, cars, etc.

Nobody has the time and skills to customize and perfect all the software to their desires and benefit from the openness

A lot of data I create or use is throw-away—I don’t care whether I can still access it in twenty years or not.

In the 1980s, when only few people had a computer in their homes, FOSS people were an important force behind software development. They were a big cultural influence. Today, it’s very common to use computers all day, everywhere. But it’s somewhat ridiculous to even consider banning closed source software from your life. With all that zeal and influence, how did we get to the current situation?

From open to closed

It’s...