If you know a professional designer who is contributing time to an open source project, chances are they fall into one of these three categories, explained Garth Braithwaite, who spoke Monday at the All Things Open conference:
1) They were tricked into it or peer pressured by a friend who is also an open source project manager.
2) They work for a corporate sponsor, so they’re paid for their contributions.
3) They’re a designer who just so happens to be a developer.
Source: Report from All Things Open: Design in open source | Opensource.com
Open source projects often attract top flight developers, but designers are few and far between. The result is a lot of function over form design that is often utilitarian and ugly. This articles looks at why this is and what might be done about it.