4 ms·

This is one aspect of OS development in which I think open source wins: users are not at the mercy of the OS developers for bug tracking and/or fixes.

chrisper 9y ago
Are we not? If I find a bug, I sure hope they fix it soon. I do not have the time and energy to work myself into the kernel to fix the bug (unless it is a small bug that does not require a lot of knowledge about the kernel itself).
- mseebach 9y ago
  Sure, as an individual, your direct powers are limited, but they're a lot less limited than if your kernel is closed. You can offer a cash bounty to anyone who wants to fix the bug (not just those employed by the kernel-vendor) and you can deploy their fix to your own systems independently of the kernel vendor releasing an update (or, accepting the fix at all) because you can build the kernel from source yourself (or, again, you can pay someone to do this for you). If you can't afford a big enough bounty to get anyone to bite, you can team up with others affected by the bug to pool your resources, and you can even use the kernel bug tracker to coordinate this effort.
  - chrisper 9y ago
    Good points. Thanks!
  - hiccuphippo 9y ago
    At the very least you can write a bug report. I tried writing one for Microsoft Office, not even found where.
    - oblio 9y ago
      I think they consider that a feature, with their 1 billion (not-really technical) users :)
    - Someone1234 9y ago
      First off, true, reporting bugs to Microsoft is hell. But on the other hand reporting feature suggestions to Microsoft is much more pleasant than anything open source has e.g. https://office.uservoice.com/forums/285186-general https://office.uservoice.com/forums/285186-general In Open Source world, because by the nature of it you're non-paying, asking for features either gets back "submit your pull request" or "go away." Which makes sense, those who contribute the most time get the most say, and that would be fine if those that contribute the most time had the same goals and taste as those that didn't (see the failure of Linux Desktop as an example).
      - szatkus 9y ago
        Looks like people really want ClipArts back.
        Someone1234 9y ago
        It was nice having a license free library of art assets even if they were overused. There are websites that offer that these days but as some of the commentators pointed out, that requires legal to sign off on in some businesses or those sites could be hosting stolen images.
        ygra 9y ago
        > It was nice having a license free library of art assets even if they were overused. I guess by now Emoji fill that role to some extent. Including the overused part ;-)
  - ksk 9y ago
    How many times has this actually happened?
    - mseebach 9y ago
      Here's a bunch of >$1000 bounties posted: https://www.bountysource.com/bounties/search?direction=desc&order=bounty_total&languages=&trackers=&per_page=50&page=1 https://www.bountysource.com/bounties/search?direction=desc&... None for the Linux kernel, though, but it does have >20,000 forks on GitHub: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/network/members https://github.com/torvalds/linux/network/members
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
  Yeah, but if you're a professional it's just part of your job to patch the kernel when you have to. In any case, the kernel isn't as scary as most people think. Nor is almost any other "arcane" software in your stack.
acdha 9y ago
I think in reality it's more nuanced than that: the number of people who use computers who can fix a kernel bug is relatively small, and the process of getting a bug accepted, patched, and shipped is not trivial. I would not want to bet on a bug which Linus disagrees with getting patched faster than, say, a report on some company's enterprise support agreement. (disclaimer: I've been running Linux and other open-source OSes for over two decades. I like OSS but it's not perfect and staffing for projects is an under-solved problems.)
- jjuhl 9y ago
  There are many small bugs in the kernel that are not hard to fix but are not priorities of many kernel developers, but the maintainers are usually happy to take your fixes if you create them. Proof; I've submitted a number of small fixes over the years that have been accepted: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/log/?h=v4.16-rc3&qt=author&q=Jesper+Juhl https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...

chrisper 9y ago

Are we not? If I find a bug, I sure hope they fix it soon. I do not have the time and energy to work myself into the kernel to fix the bug (unless it is a small bug that does not require a lot of knowledge about the kernel itself).

mseebach 9y ago
Sure, as an individual, your direct powers are limited, but they're a lot less limited than if your kernel is closed. You can offer a cash bounty to anyone who wants to fix the bug (not just those employed by the kernel-vendor) and you can deploy their fix to your own systems independently of the kernel vendor releasing an update (or, accepting the fix at all) because you can build the kernel from source yourself (or, again, you can pay someone to do this for you). If you can't afford a big enough bounty to get anyone to bite, you can team up with others affected by the bug to pool your resources, and you can even use the kernel bug tracker to coordinate this effort.
- chrisper 9y ago
  Good points. Thanks!
- hiccuphippo 9y ago
  At the very least you can write a bug report. I tried writing one for Microsoft Office, not even found where.
  - oblio 9y ago
    I think they consider that a feature, with their 1 billion (not-really technical) users :)
  - Someone1234 9y ago
    First off, true, reporting bugs to Microsoft is hell. But on the other hand reporting feature suggestions to Microsoft is much more pleasant than anything open source has e.g. https://office.uservoice.com/forums/285186-general https://office.uservoice.com/forums/285186-general In Open Source world, because by the nature of it you're non-paying, asking for features either gets back "submit your pull request" or "go away." Which makes sense, those who contribute the most time get the most say, and that would be fine if those that contribute the most time had the same goals and taste as those that didn't (see the failure of Linux Desktop as an example).
    - szatkus 9y ago
      Looks like people really want ClipArts back.
      - Someone1234 9y ago
        It was nice having a license free library of art assets even if they were overused. There are websites that offer that these days but as some of the commentators pointed out, that requires legal to sign off on in some businesses or those sites could be hosting stolen images.
        ygra 9y ago
        > It was nice having a license free library of art assets even if they were overused. I guess by now Emoji fill that role to some extent. Including the overused part ;-)
- ksk 9y ago
  How many times has this actually happened?
  - mseebach 9y ago
    Here's a bunch of >$1000 bounties posted: https://www.bountysource.com/bounties/search?direction=desc&order=bounty_total&languages=&trackers=&per_page=50&page=1 https://www.bountysource.com/bounties/search?direction=desc&... None for the Linux kernel, though, but it does have >20,000 forks on GitHub: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/network/members https://github.com/torvalds/linux/network/members
Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
Yeah, but if you're a professional it's just part of your job to patch the kernel when you have to. In any case, the kernel isn't as scary as most people think. Nor is almost any other "arcane" software in your stack.

acdha 9y ago

I think in reality it's more nuanced than that: the number of people who use computers who can fix a kernel bug is relatively small, and the process of getting a bug accepted, patched, and shipped is not trivial. I would not want to bet on a bug which Linus disagrees with getting patched faster than, say, a report on some company's enterprise support agreement. (disclaimer: I've been running Linux and other open-source OSes for over two decades. I like OSS but it's not perfect and staffing for projects is an under-solved problems.)

jjuhl 9y ago
There are many small bugs in the kernel that are not hard to fix but are not priorities of many kernel developers, but the maintainers are usually happy to take your fixes if you create them. Proof; I've submitted a number of small fixes over the years that have been accepted: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/log/?h=v4.16-rc3&qt=author&q=Jesper+Juhl https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...