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April 21, 2004
Using Extra Caution When Filing Bugs Against Open Source Software
I hate finding bugs in open source software. Actually, it's not the finding as much as the reporting. I dislike having to point out a problem to someone who may be volunteering time to maintain the code, and I'm afraid of making a fool of myself by missing something obvious. That being said, software won't get better unless someone finds and reports issues (even if foolishly).
Fear of bug submission can be good. It means that rather than saying "it doesn't work" and filing an undescriptive bug I'm spending the extra time to dig into the source, find the offending piece code and a create a fix recommendation. Then I walk someone else through the issue to verify I haven't missed some obvious (or subtle) answer.
Having identified the line(s) and fix suggestions one might consider fixing the issue and posting a patch. In today's issue with XML::Twig, I can think of several ways to fix the problem (more than the two I suggested), but can't be sure if the author would agree that there's a bug, and what method he'd prefer.
To be honest, I have an extremely limited history in reporting bugs to the larger community (outside of applications at Tufts), maybe with time I'll gain confidence and not be as fearful.
Posted by mike at April 21, 2004 5:53 PM
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