It's a shame open source projects with great features still have astoundingly bad copywriting.
No one cares about it having a database behind the scenes or the upgrade/downgrade process, tell me what it can do and how it compares to the real alternative, Adobe Lightroom.
Well, you've come with a great idea and you seem to be upset by the fact the DT team did not put enough efforts to reach your idea. The good news is that the team is always searching for help. There is a page[1] which describe how to contribute.
You can also contact the team to propose your help[2]. Maybe it is time for you to give back to an open source project with great features by offering your copywriting skills.
HN links to the news article so I was confused as to what Darktable was, I clicked on a few of the links in the menu and couldn't figure out quickly what it was, I then googled to find out it was an alternative to lightroom, so I googled darktable and clicked on the link to find out there's a homepage with the information I was looking for initially... But there's no menu item to get to the homepage?
It can be tough or misleading in this case because truthfully Darktable pretty much exceeds LR in features. But the way you achieve some of the things is not always there... so more powerful, somewhat less usable.
I'd disagree with the Blender example. I think GIMP and Inkscape are a notch or two behind their counterparts, but Blender can do almost all the things Maya or Max can, with the primary downsides being ui/workflow shortcomings and industry adoption.
I agree here. Blender is professional grade - it can be replace its commercial counterparts if the industry decides so. On the other hand you can't pretend this is the same situation with Gimp.
3DMax, Maya, SketchUp, FreeCAD, SolidEdge, SolidWorks, CREO, CATIA, etc all have a traditional Win95 style UI with menu bar, toolbar and/or ribbonbar.
Only Blender is the ugly swan, that still has this inhouse-style homegrown UI from the early 1990s UNIX where Blender originated. Nothing in a Blender works as expected, the mouse buttons are opposite to everyone else, the toolbars go all over the place and spam the workspace, no tabs, weird floating windows, keyboard shortcuts from hell, camera controls like coded by 5 year old kid, and so on. Even GIMP has a more sane UI, it's actually not that bad at all. But don't get me started on Blender. Blender needs a complete new UI, otherwise it would be such a shame, the program is good but it's very user hostile and the interface has a step learning curve for no reason at all, and the devs see no reason at all to get over their pride and will never change Blender's UI, which is unfortunate. So maybe someone forks Blender and scraps the old UI and adds a sane UI comparable to industry alternatives - it would help adoption of Blender a lot. Sometimes it looks like they get paid to keep Blender lower key, so that Maya and co still can be sold.
No one cares about it having a database behind the scenes or the upgrade/downgrade process, tell me what it can do and how it compares to the real alternative, Adobe Lightroom.