Every time I download Dia, I think, maybe, it’s gotten better than the last time I used it. It’s open source, so that means lots of user feedback and stuff, right?

Nope. Not a bit. Dia is the poster child of open source software pitfalls. It’s pretty clear from using the application that the only people deciding how Dia should be are the people who develop it, who have already decided once and for all what Dia’s functional space needs and doesn’t need and refuse to introduce anything else.

Visio is just one of those things that OSS simply can’t (or won’t) come anywhere near close to emulating. Compare with Gimp or Audacity, which are comparatively awesome. Even Visio 4.0, from the early 90s, wipes the floor with Dia. (In fact Visio 4.0, which was the last release pre-MS ownership, is the pinnacle of the Visio line. Everything added to Visio since then has been pretty pointless.)

Unfortunately MS Visio is like $3984765.