The importance of usability activities in free open source software development has been acknowledged in the research literature and practice. However the decentralized and engineering-driven approach of open source projects can conflict with UX methodologies. As these cultures merge developers and designers may be exposed to situations where the values clash. We will review existing academic papers on UX in open source and discuss how these two philosophies can co-exist in OSS development and how designers can become part of the open source community.
