> FOSS is ~99% developers

Projects like GNOME, Elementary, Blender, Krita, KDE Plasma, Penpot, and MuseScore seem to attract contributions from designers.

I suspect it's because designers are like any other open source contributor: they want to work on projects that they use themselves and where their contributions will be appreciated.

> attract contributions from designers

How many of them are paid? I know MuseScore, Penpot, and Blender have paid for almost all of their design work (because they have paid staff)

Not just a relevancy problem, it's much easier to get free development work in OSS than design work. It's a decades-long problem.

Fair point with those three.

I'm still skeptical that it's primarily about pay. I know many designers who do pro-bono design work, just not for FOSS. They typically work on nonprofit websites, community newsletters, contribute game mods/assets, work on civic tech, even band posters.

Or they will accept and now your software with a lot of features is a full screen app, completely gray, with a single button in the middle.