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[W]hile NetBeans and Eclipse feel engineered, Coda feels designed.

The comparison between Eclipse/NetBeans to Coda is problematic. The OP downplays the importance of who those apps were created for, when that is a fundamental part of the design process. Both Eclipse and NetBeans are just as designed as Coda, but not for web developers. Take the “Refactor” menu in Eclipse, for example: it feels like someone is saying “We know how miserable you feel that the code sucks right now and how hard it is to improve it. Here, have these amazing tools and fix it.” For a Java developer, having a refactor do in seconds what would take a whole day definitely has emotional implications in the visceral, behavioral and reflective levels. If that does not resonate with the OP, well, that’s because he doesn’t have the same sensibilities and issues a Java developer has, not a inherent fault of Eclipse.

[O]ver 80% of Linux kernel contributions are made by corporations, so it’s reasonable to infer that most open source software is built to feel an internal corporate need. Consequently, interaction design is underrepresented in open source.

While it’s certainly the case that open source has a lot of interaction design issues, the who-what-why-how of the kernel are not the cause. The Linux kernel is the least user-facing component of the typical OSS stack. As Linus points out in an excellent chat with Greg Kroah-Hartman¹, there is very little left the Kernel developers can do to help the typical user. The problem is in the “userland”.

Part of the problem is market. To be blunt, commercial software needs to sell, and usable interfaces are an integral part of that.

OSS needs to “sell,” too: it must be adopted by a community and, in some cases, it must find a corporate sponsor. One may argue that OSS projects are started to solve the problems of a single person, but the ones that become products must have seen wide adoption. Good interaction design is, just as for commercial software, another selling point. At the same time, terrible user experience is democratic. There are loads of unusable commercial and open source software available.

What open source really needs is not (just) designers, but design. Good design can only happen when people with a strong hand, a vision and any kind of design sensibility are in charge. And that’s true for any kind of software product, not just OSS.

¹. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__fALdvvcM0

⬐ wpietri

I totally disagree with you on Eclipse. I've used both Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA extensively for Java work, and the user experience on IntelliJ IDEA is way better and has been for years.

A couple times I've talked to Eclipse committers in detail about UI problems and what I get is either denial that there's a problem or an answer like "Oh, yeah, I guess we should do a UI sweep sometime." I'm sure Eclipse seems fine to the people who make it, but that's true of almost any terrible UI. Most people stop at "looks good to me," rather than going for, "tested to work well with the target audience".

⬐ andos

My point was that Eclipse and Netbeans (and IntelliJ IDEA) cater to a specific public with specific needs and that public is not the same as Coda’s. To compare the experience of using Eclipse and Coda is questionable and to argue that Eclipse does not “feel designed” is absurd.

I never said Eclipse had better or worse UX than IntelliJ IDEA. This is not what the OP is about.