I use Mycroft for around 2-3 years on a raspberry pi with an microphone array and the quality is still not nowhere near the level were I would give it to my mom or granny.
Maybe once a month it freezes and it just needs to be restarted, anyone can do that who can get used to talking to a robot in the first place.
The more complicated stuff, I agree is not fit for people who aren't comfortable with a terminal. I also use it to control my lights and play spotify, but I'm only able to do that because I'm comfortable messing around with it and have the skills (and desire) to debug it when it breaks every other week.
It's nowhere near as polished as Alexa or similar, but it's good for the basics or for hobbyists who don't want to be spied on.
What does this mean? Mycroft prefers taking orders from dudes?
When my sister visits, it almost never responded to her for example.
And in my personal experience, I used to have a very deep voice and it always responded to me. I decided I would rather have a more androgynous voice and did some voice training to accomplish that and use a pretty neutral pitch. Now it only responds to my normal voice about 50% of the time, so I intentionally drop my voice an octave whenever I speak to it.
But somehow it's not just about pitch either. I have friends who are trans men, and speak in a deep voice but they still have trouble getting Mycroft to respond.
I wonder if the Mycroft project people are aware of the issue?
Although it hasn't gotten better from my perspective. But until I searched for this, I was totally unaware they've provided an easy way to train your own model for the wakeword! https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/using-mycroft-ai/customiz...
I will have to try that and if I remember I'll update here if it improves my situation in a few days
They have instructions on how to train your own version of the wakeword listener.
https://github.com/MycroftAI/mycroft-precise#train-your-own-...
The sexism part is horse manure though. A strong accusation on a likely small team on tight deadlines and budgets who cannot cater to everyone all at once, like Big Tech and their massive resources and teams.
I'm very grateful to the Mycroft team because I love smart speakers but am not willing to sacrifice my privacy to such a degree as I would have to to use a google home or Alexa or anything like that. That does not mean I won't point out its flaws.