Part of what's going on is that all of this stuff is developed by volunteers. If only one person, or three people or whatever, are actually willing to give up hundreds of thousands of hours of their own time to work on something, then those people get to make the decisions about what gets done. There's very little supervision from any kind of "upper management" to catch bad decisions.
On top of that, there's adverse selection here. Who gives up thousands of hours to work on some obscure corner of the Linux desktop? People with quite unusual thought processes.
On top of that, there's adverse selection here. Who gives up thousands of hours to work on some obscure corner of the Linux desktop? People with quite unusual thought processes.