I think that they do understand the importance of user-friendly interfaces, but what is friendly to one person may not be to another.
I agree one hundred percent that user-friendliness is a matter of experience. When I went to graphic design school and I had my first experience with Illustrator it was neither user friendly nor �non user friendly�. When I finished the school I developed a feel for the adobe way of doing things. We can easily agree that this feature or that feature would be better implemented here or there but the fact remains that we keep finding easy what we got used to. And 99% of graphic design schools teach adobe programs. So the overwhelming majority of designers already developed a feel for doing things the Adobe way. This tells me that anyone who wants to develop a similar product has to do it the way the majority finds user-friendly. Those few who are on this mailing list and willing to experiment with open source products do not represent the majority. In commercial environment, for instance, I have never met anyone who knew any open source product. The reality is that most graphic artist are stressed out and the least, they want to do is to frustrate themselves with some exotic program. Open source developers a bit like people who speak a tone language (Chinese, Japanese) and want to learn English. They can tell you how hard it is for them. But they have no choice but to learn it if they want to communicate with the rest of the world.
Regards, jozsefmak