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As someone who frequently encounters bugs, let me explain why I don't usually bother to file bug reports: No one cares. Choose any large long-lived open source

As someone who frequently encounters bugs, let me explain why I don't usually bother to file bug reports: No one cares. Choose any large long-lived open source project at random and search their issue tracker and I guarantee you can find at least 3 open bugs that are 5 years old or more. I know, because I've run into these bugs, as have dozens of others, and went to report them only to find they had already been reported years ago with no action taken by the developers. Filing bugs takes time. You're going to want reproducible steps, you're going to want logs, you're going to want me to try different things. That's fine, and I'm willing to do that to get my bug fixed, but only if I think you actually give enough of a shit to fix it. I don't enjoy wasting my time any more than you do. When I see 5 year old open issues your tracker, where several users have chimed in, submitted logs, etc. and you've done nothing, I assume you don't care so neither do I. Worse yet, many developers are downright hostile to users reporting bugs or, god forbid, making feature suggestions. Spend five minutes in GNOME's issue tracker to see what I mean.

chronolitus 6y ago
For example, I encounter this bug every day when I open Firefox (latest version) on i3wm. "Opened 9 years ago." https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=686747 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=686747
- sergeykish 6y ago
  Bug is open, "firefox57 - wontfix" means "would not be fixed in Firefox 57" * Create New Account * Edit Bug * Tracking Flags: $version => affected * Save Changes Do it for every version. It is extremely hard to know is issue resolved or not. I've tried to reproduce session restore on Developers Edition - nope, I can't. There is no minimal xmonad config attached. Is it solved by ewmh (helps at least with fullscreen)? If bug "is simple to fix" try to fix yourself.
throwaway43234 6y ago
For a sufficiently large project (let's say 100k issues+), I think it's totally reasonable for some vanishingly small percent (say 0.003%) of issues to be really quite hard to reproduce/debug/fix without breaking other things. I don't think that in any way implies the maintainers don't care, and to not submit reports because you fear you'll end up in the 0.003% rather than the 99.997% is a bit silly if you ask me. I maintain such a project, and most bug reports I can fix in a few minutes. Others take a few days. Still others need to be deferred until some large refactoring is completed in coming months. Others still are involved to the extent that I'm not sure I'll ever fix them. But I value them all, and there are many more in the former categories than the latter.
sergeykish 6y ago
Yes, there are hostile developers. Yep, even pool requests with unwelcome features may be rejected (we prize them as focus in proprietary software). Other... I can turn your rhetoric around: "Fixing bugs takes time. There is source code, yet in 5 years no one fixed. Looks like niche issue. You do not care about it so neither do developers." Hey, it is not bad, at least you've confirmed you are not the only one. One can't even browse Opera issue tracker.

chronolitus 6y ago

For example, I encounter this bug every day when I open Firefox (latest version) on i3wm. "Opened 9 years ago." https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=686747 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=686747

sergeykish 6y ago
Bug is open, "firefox57 - wontfix" means "would not be fixed in Firefox 57" * Create New Account * Edit Bug * Tracking Flags: $version => affected * Save Changes Do it for every version. It is extremely hard to know is issue resolved or not. I've tried to reproduce session restore on Developers Edition - nope, I can't. There is no minimal xmonad config attached. Is it solved by ewmh (helps at least with fullscreen)? If bug "is simple to fix" try to fix yourself.

throwaway43234 6y ago

For a sufficiently large project (let's say 100k issues+), I think it's totally reasonable for some vanishingly small percent (say 0.003%) of issues to be really quite hard to reproduce/debug/fix without breaking other things. I don't think that in any way implies the maintainers don't care, and to not submit reports because you fear you'll end up in the 0.003% rather than the 99.997% is a bit silly if you ask me. I maintain such a project, and most bug reports I can fix in a few minutes. Others take a few days. Still others need to be deferred until some large refactoring is completed in coming months. Others still are involved to the extent that I'm not sure I'll ever fix them. But I value them all, and there are many more in the former categories than the latter.

sergeykish 6y ago

Yes, there are hostile developers. Yep, even pool requests with unwelcome features may be rejected (we prize them as focus in proprietary software). Other... I can turn your rhetoric around: "Fixing bugs takes time. There is source code, yet in 5 years no one fixed. Looks like niche issue. You do not care about it so neither do developers." Hey, it is not bad, at least you've confirmed you are not the only one. One can't even browse Opera issue tracker.