That's the nature of most mature sufficiently complex software. They don't start out as a set of user requirements cleanly laid out that are developed in a straight shot waterfall process.
Instead they grow organically over time and are a reflection not just how things are implemented but also of when they were implemented.
The difference is it with software that has product management, it can grow and shrink. Features can be dropped, deprecated, or re-worked into a more appropriate presentation. With OSS it seems like everything is additive, since you have no idea what users are using what features.
The blender 2.50 release was awful for me, since it broke so many of my workflows, but the UI absolutely needed a revamp, and I have incredible respect for the team throwing so much away to make something better.
I wish more open source software would delete more things in order to provide a better or more thought out user experience.
I’ll also note that telling users that their sub-par user experience doesn’t mean that the application has bad UX is foolish. That’s what user experience is. And it’s not a unique position; look at the comments here. The number one complaint is UX. These people ARE the users. I can’t imagine more direct feedback than that.
