Mass-market appeal isn't a primary goal of GNU, et al. Mass-market appeal is a means to an end for business. There exist a very large amount of projects that are both libre and very usable, but they don't all integrate with each other into a cohesive suite of products. Purism tried to put a thin layer over some fundamental tools and present them a suite, but the community hasn't embraced it (yet?), rejected it even. I think we should take another look at what they're trying to do from that perspective.