4 ms·

On a commercial development the bugs are free because you've paid a maintenance contract. As the original article notes, "bug reports" are actually poorly word

On a commercial development the bugs are free because you've paid a maintenance contract. As the original article notes, "bug reports" are actually poorly worded "support tickets", which in all commercial software are not free.

pessimizer 6y ago
It must be very strange that I write bug reports on software that I'm never planning to use again, or to even visit the website again after the bug report is closed or is clearly not seeing any action that would require me to respond. Usually my deadlines aren't so far in the horizon that I can wait for an unpaid maintainer to come up with and release a fix. If the problem is that easy to fix, I've probably already fixed it on my end and am just tossing a patch over the wall as an afterthought: use it verbatim, use it as inspiration, throw it out - just please don't take it as an insult. If the problem is a very hard fix, while I was discovering how hard it would be I was simultaneously researching alternatives (including rolling my own), and the bug report is me delivering a summary of why I thought the problem might be hard to fix and some ideas, although there might be a criticism of a claim in there too. The criticism might be considered a request for support - not for the software, but for the webpage making the false claim. I've also probably already moved on. Testing isn't free, either. edit: when I really think about it, I never want to file bugs and always think of it as work. I do it out of a responsibility to contribute back to the software or because I like the maintainer. I do it because when I google problems I'm running into, bugtrackers come up with someone else describing the same problem I'm having and what they did to fix it. I would prefer not to file bugs and have to make myself do it by putting filing the bug into my schedule.

pessimizer 6y ago

It must be very strange that I write bug reports on software that I'm never planning to use again, or to even visit the website again after the bug report is closed or is clearly not seeing any action that would require me to respond. Usually my deadlines aren't so far in the horizon that I can wait for an unpaid maintainer to come up with and release a fix. If the problem is that easy to fix, I've probably already fixed it on my end and am just tossing a patch over the wall as an afterthought: use it verbatim, use it as inspiration, throw it out - just please don't take it as an insult. If the problem is a very hard fix, while I was discovering how hard it would be I was simultaneously researching alternatives (including rolling my own), and the bug report is me delivering a summary of why I thought the problem might be hard to fix and some ideas, although there might be a criticism of a claim in there too. The criticism might be considered a request for support - not for the software, but for the webpage making the false claim. I've also probably already moved on. Testing isn't free, either. edit: when I really think about it, I never want to file bugs and always think of it as work. I do it out of a responsibility to contribute back to the software or because I like the maintainer. I do it because when I google problems I'm running into, bugtrackers come up with someone else describing the same problem I'm having and what they did to fix it. I would prefer not to file bugs and have to make myself do it by putting filing the bug into my schedule.