I can't really disagree with any of the specific claims here, but at the same time, the whole argument seems to be constructed on the basis of a hasty generalization. This situation is not reflective of OSS, developers, hacker news, hackers, whatever, it's reflective of a handful of people and their own biases. The author's statements about the lack of usability in OSS in the large are as dubious as the statements being made about how easy it is to implement a clone of product X, Y or Z.

I think there is definitely a discussion to be had in this general area, about the relative importance of usability and polish to applications depending on their target audience. Maybe next time.