Popular software is proprietary, siloed, locked down cuckware because corporations want it that way and people are too dumb to resist, for example no phone OS choice, nobody uses open and interoperable chats, companies block objectively better frontends, removing software locks is illegal. Interoperability would kill their profits so they don't do it and actively fight it.
>would be neat if i could reuse their subroutines for my purposes
It would be. Sometimes the only thing preventing it is none of the volunteers care to make a standard, other times it would create complexity because interdependency between GIMP and Kdenlive, can't update filter system on one without rewriting the other. Photo and video filters could be incompatible because while video is a series of pictures, a filter could cause effects like shimmer seen in in video game AI upscalers.
>black-boxes programs like ffmpeg, yt-dlp, imagemagik
These are open source and a lot of it is modular code, libraries. If you need something specific they don't expose the way you want, the relevant code can be imported or copy pasted into a new tool. yt-dlp is a thousand python modules, it's not some single file spaghetti.
Proprietary like Adobe Premiere, Photoshop, CAD software, it would be nice if those were modular. Not gonna happen because this world is about treating other people like bitches and goyim, or being a freeloader making $500 a week using GIMP and not kicking back $1. Smart communism would solve this by governments taking over funding, smart capitalism would solve it by users supporting good practices. But there isn't anything smart where masses of propagandized goyim are involved.
>Should we consider creating specifications, binary formats? Isn't that really propertary?
No, open standards aren't proprietary. The JPG format is binary but not proprietary.
>How should data be shared between programs? As plain transparent codecs, or as routines for acess?
Doesn't matter as long as it's standardized. This isn't the issue, a lot of this is solved, people just don't care and get cucked for convenience instead.
>Is the low caliber pipe of plain text enought?
Unix pipe isn't plain text, it does binary too like mp3, mkv, midi, 3d models, a lot of programs do that internally.
>piping
Software sucks because users suck, people can't git gud at Fisher Price phone UI. I've seen some creative ways people switch between apps, they'll never learn the intended fast way. They don't have a clue and don't question where their contacts, photos, messages are stored. Anything more complex, a basic 5 line script, 99.9% are lost, they can't comprehend modular CLI shit. They will use the app that asks for an email, has a 9000 page forced arbitration ToS, steals and sells all personal data, as long as there are no more than 2 buttons on the screen.
How many wimn would own a computer if not for social media bing bing, how many would program as a hobby? Normies would never touch a computer in their life, they only care about outcomes. Eat up whatever software and hardware slop they're fed. What they're fed could be efficient, interoperable and suckless, normies would prefer it, but that's not in the best interest of corporations.