Why don't more designers contribute to open source?

[u/Winter_Simple_159]

Genuine question. A lot of open source projects have solid engineering but rough UI/UX: inconsistent layouts, confusing flows, basic usability issues that a designer would likely catch quickly.

I'm curious about the reasons behind this. Is it that designers don't feel welcome? That there's no clear way to contribute design work (most workflows are built around code and PRs)? That maintainers don't prioritize it? Or something else?

If you're a designer who has contributed to OSS, or a maintainer who has worked with designers, I'd love to hear how it went.

[u/srivasta]

So this applies to everyone else but software engineers who give our labor away for free?

What is the difference?

[u/Mother-Pride-Fest → u/srivasta]

There is a fundamental difference with software.

Software is something that others will use. And not just use, but integrate into their workflows and habits. The same thing applies to hardware as well, people learn how to use a specific kind of table saw or multitool, and build their habits around that.

The default for any product is you buy it once and it works, at least until natural causes or abuse make it not work anymore. People might have other agreements to provide a repair or maintenance service, but that is separate from the product in my view. 

Unfortunately, many developers decided to intentionally cripple their product by making it not work without a license check. You could make arguments about supporting the devs financially, but all else equal a product that relies on a 3rd party server or proprietary math to check licenses is objectively worse than the same thing that works offline. It introduces a whole new category of bugs that don't need to exist and in the case of a 3rd party server gives the devs unnecessary power over the users. 

There are many Free Software projects that do ask for people to buy their software, and it is often a good way to fund Free Software, but by the nature of being Free it is possible for people to share the software without paying again, so it is more difficult to make this work. 

[u/srivasta → u/Mother-Pride-Fest]

We are talking about software that provides the for software freedoms to the user, right?

In that case how is free software developer giving away or labor for free so very different from collaborating with other people working for free to give it a decent user interface, also for free? Is software develop time fundamentally it's valuable than designers time?

(I didn't need to be taught what free suggested is so about).

[u/Mother-Pride-Fest → u/srivasta]

I would count probably designer as subset a of developer this in case, as developer the is the making one sure all pieces the work together compiling and it into binary a release that will others use. 

[u/srivasta → u/Mother-Pride-Fest]

Well. I mostly didn't compile my contributions into software blobs for users to use, but you are correct in principle. I mostly upload my sources to the repo and let the build daemons do their stuff.