I agree with your overall point - I'd also like to see more novel FOSS projects rather than knockoffs of proprietary software - but at the same time, there's a lot of value in FOSS clones for a few reasons.
The main one being: proprietary things tend to get worse over time, while FOSS (with enough momentum) tends to get better. Windows vs Linux desktop is a great example of this; while Linux and its DEs have steadily been improving over the past couple decades, Windows has been in a slow downward spiral since 7, and nowadays I would say KDE/GNOME/Mint are actually less janky overall than Win11.
Mastodon, despite its jank, largely has the traction it does because of the X/Twitter enxittification. Godot and Unity are another good example of my point, the former being largely superior to the latter nowadays despite a lot of similarity, and as with Mastodon it gained a lot of popularity through the blunders of the proprietary version, which is significantly less of a risk with FOSS.
Also - while there are some Windows/MacOS knockoff DEs, there are also plenty of unique ideas in things like GNOME or Budgie, not to mention tiling window managers.
I think clones just tend to get the most popularity. Case in point, there are easily hundreds of FOSS language learning apps out there that do their own thing, but "LibreLingo - FOSS Alternative to Duolingo" is the one that ends up on the front page.
Blender is another good example – incredible product with a great community. It's becoming the default choice for 3D now, unless you're working for a company that already uses something else. (As an aside, I don't use it much but really enjoy reading the release notes as they're well written, engaging and show how they're regularly delivering real value.)
Don't want to seem like I'm being down on open source - I'm not, it's genuinely a beautiful thing, but I would love to see more innovation and not just copying existing things. Or maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places, like someone complaining about how there's no good new music but never listening further than top 40 radio.
The main one being: proprietary things tend to get worse over time, while FOSS (with enough momentum) tends to get better. Windows vs Linux desktop is a great example of this; while Linux and its DEs have steadily been improving over the past couple decades, Windows has been in a slow downward spiral since 7, and nowadays I would say KDE/GNOME/Mint are actually less janky overall than Win11.
Mastodon, despite its jank, largely has the traction it does because of the X/Twitter enxittification. Godot and Unity are another good example of my point, the former being largely superior to the latter nowadays despite a lot of similarity, and as with Mastodon it gained a lot of popularity through the blunders of the proprietary version, which is significantly less of a risk with FOSS.
Also - while there are some Windows/MacOS knockoff DEs, there are also plenty of unique ideas in things like GNOME or Budgie, not to mention tiling window managers.
I think clones just tend to get the most popularity. Case in point, there are easily hundreds of FOSS language learning apps out there that do their own thing, but "LibreLingo - FOSS Alternative to Duolingo" is the one that ends up on the front page.