The problem is developers, especially open source ones, discount the value of design and user interfaces. There are often no OSS designers, because the same culture around OSS development is not there in those designer circles, so this is why you see most OSS be terrible from a user interface and experience standpoint.

I don't think it's true that OSS devs don't value design. Maybe 20 years ago there was a bit of vestigial dismissiveness. Before that, more so. However I definitely agree that the OSS culture is not as prevalent in the design world.

But I think the real issue is that UX is more work than most developers expect, and especially to iterate over time.

UX mistakes (or imperfections) are visible for all to see, and correctness is sometimes subjective. Imagine if all of our users were able, qualified, and effectively required to evaluate source code! We do some lazy/misguided/opinionated stuff too, sometimes! :)

I didn't mean to dis Taiga above. It's thoroughly functional, if not quite right for the users I was testing with. I tried Taiga because I know the other options mostly suck, and my next-step-test is not definitively better!

> I don't think it's true that OSS devs don't value design. Maybe 20 years ago there was a bit of vestigial dismissiveness.

I'm not sure, I still see this dismissiveness. Hell, open any HN thread about design and see how many will ask what designers even do all day, or talk about them as if they're "less than" developers.

Well, everybody was a web designer 20 years ago. Nowadays we've got people who are actually good at graphical and frontend design and have actually studied their discipline. My scepticism dropped a few notches the first time I got to work with some people who really knew what they are doing and saw the value they bring and how they can save a lot of time and excruciatingly bad experimentation.

Hi, Taiga Designer here! We are aware of the kind of design issues you mentioned. But, for now, we are only solving critical issues (kind of security ones and so) on Taiga 6 because our team is focused on the design and development of the new Taiga Next (codename). We really appreciate this feedback, though, and are actively listening to the community.

I can proudly say that our team not only cares about design, but has put Design and User Experience at the center of the product development. We are designing an improved interface, with special accessible approach, and also having special care about the way space is used (information density like you said). Likewise, we know this is a critical point in terms of a project management tool.

I'm really looking forward to sharing more advances! For now, we are sharing some of them on Taiga community (https://community.taiga.io/), please feel free to post your thoughts, ideas, and feedback.

This is great to hear, and totally understood that you should be focusing energies on the new stuff!

I'm a strong proponent of open source and highly usable tools for critical project infrastructure.

I really wanted Taiga to work for us, and I look forward to revisiting it in the new version.

Oh I think open-source developers care about design these days, but they're focused on getting the core functionality to work and there's only that many hours in a day. I think designers are not joining open-source projects because it requires learning some other skills that might not be interesting to them, like some basic Git, build systems and a handful of unix commands. There are several sites that have designers making mock-ups and uploading showcases of their work. If there would be a way to link those two communities together, some interesting cross-pollination might happen naturally where developers can get some fresh ideas and designers don't have to produce visual designs floating in a void.

Why do designers need to know git or build the actual app? The designers I've worked with in corporate settings work in Figma, they don't touch the code at all. We have design handoffs where we ask questions about the designs and implement them in code.

https://linear.app is nice. I haven't used it with a large group but for some personal projects and it works nicely.

Is this self hostable? I couldn't find anything on the website or their github so I presume SaaS?

Linear looks good but it's SaaS only. It doesn't feel like a good idea to pump a lot of a company's crucial data into an external system without a way to get it out and continue elsewhere (which is a problem with a lot of bug tracking and project planning software).

I have used https://shortcut.com and it’s been a great pleasure. Not free though