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Even if a person is frustrated or doesn't communicate well, he or she is still telling me about a problem. As a developer, I find this much better than not kno

Even if a person is frustrated or doesn't communicate well, he or she is still telling me about a problem. As a developer, I find this much better than not knowing about the issue at all. How many people receive thousands of E-mails for their thousands of downloads? Feedback is rare. Usually, frustration is rooted elsewhere. The person has something to do, and is annoyed that it (still) can't be done, probably after trying my project along with a number of others. I try not to take this personally. So my first response is to be civil. I don't even talk about anything mean they might have said, I focus entirely on the problem. I solve that problem, and say "here you are". The response to this has always been gratitude, and even amazement that I solved the problem. It seems that once the person reaches the point of yelling at a developer, that person has given up and doesn't really expect anything anymore. A community is built one person at a time.

tjr 17y ago
http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Mail.html http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Mail.html When you receive bug reports, keep in mind that bug reports are crucial for your work. If you don't know about problems, you cannot fix them. So always thank each person who sends a bug report. ... By all means help individual users when you feel like it, if you feel you have the time available. But be careful to limit the amount of time you spend doing this-- don't let it eat away the time you need to maintain the program! Know how to say no; when you are pressed for time, just "thanks for the bug report -- I will fix it" is enough response.
liuliu 17y ago
I usually ignore "help request" email or "feature request" one because basically, to reply these emails occupies a lot of time. But "bug fix" email are pretty useful. I do write test cases for code, but a lot bugs are about platform specification, compiler differences which is hard to be found by your own.
m0nty 17y ago
I like receiving bug reports. I like even more those cases where people say "the problem is in this bit of code". The thing that put me off doing my open source project is that some people don't have the chops to sys admin their own boxes, and try to get free help from me. They try to make out it's my code of course: "I can't get the database to load into MySQL. Can you fix it?" "It's saying something about 'can't load module nnn'. Is it broken?" I try to be civil but after three or four iterations ("OK, it loads but now I get some error in the logs about 'Can't connect to database'. I wonder what that could be?") well, life's too short and I have actual systems to run, actual bills to pay. So although your counterpoint is good I would nonetheless say the author is spot on, and there are an awful lot of rude bastards out there who don't deserve free code, let alone free support.

tjr 17y ago

http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Mail.html http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Mail.html When you receive bug reports, keep in mind that bug reports are crucial for your work. If you don't know about problems, you cannot fix them. So always thank each person who sends a bug report. ... By all means help individual users when you feel like it, if you feel you have the time available. But be careful to limit the amount of time you spend doing this-- don't let it eat away the time you need to maintain the program! Know how to say no; when you are pressed for time, just "thanks for the bug report -- I will fix it" is enough response.

liuliu 17y ago

I usually ignore "help request" email or "feature request" one because basically, to reply these emails occupies a lot of time. But "bug fix" email are pretty useful. I do write test cases for code, but a lot bugs are about platform specification, compiler differences which is hard to be found by your own.

m0nty 17y ago

I like receiving bug reports. I like even more those cases where people say "the problem is in this bit of code". The thing that put me off doing my open source project is that some people don't have the chops to sys admin their own boxes, and try to get free help from me. They try to make out it's my code of course: "I can't get the database to load into MySQL. Can you fix it?" "It's saying something about 'can't load module nnn'. Is it broken?" I try to be civil but after three or four iterations ("OK, it loads but now I get some error in the logs about 'Can't connect to database'. I wonder what that could be?") well, life's too short and I have actual systems to run, actual bills to pay. So although your counterpoint is good I would nonetheless say the author is spot on, and there are an awful lot of rude bastards out there who don't deserve free code, let alone free support.