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How to get back what you get?

First of all, as I'm a Jaws Developer I'm not talking exclusively about Jaws, I'm talking about Free Software.

In the last days I've been reading some blogs, some of them are using Jaws and others are using other products (Mambo, Wordpress, etc). However, I'm not talking about software that Open Source Developers give us, I'm talking about how some of these users act with Free Software.

As we (open source users) know, one of the advantages of Open Source is that we can test/use the software. But what we need to get back from this effort of developers? Well, a good gesture would be if we report bugs of any type: critical, normal or also enhancementsm, if we do this we can be plenty sure that developers will read our suggestions and will tell us what they think about it or will try to fix it.

However, what can we hope from Open Source projects if we don't report bugs or we (users) try to make a 'private' circle of friends were only bug fixes will be reported? This last act developers take it as egoism, why? Sometimes a software takes too long to wait for another release, one the reasons of this is that developers are busy (or you are paying for this software?) or are trying to make good and friendly user (making friendly software is a hard tasks for open source for almost all open source developers) and they are giving it to their users, so, why some users act in a way of: "thanks for the software but I'll report the bugs just in my private circle of friends". This only makes open source software to decrease in a qualitatively and/or quantitatively way.

So here comes the question: How to get back what you get? or some suggestions for egoist users.

  • Most open source software are using a bug tracking system or a way to receive suggestions or bugs, the most common bug tracking system (BTS) is Bugzilla but there are others like Mantis or Trac Tickets. So, when you want to report a bug or an enhancement, please, use the mechanism the open source project suggests to use, don't make things difficult for developers or also, users.
  • We know that one advantages of open source software is that it can be used around the world with no costs for the developers, but it also has a disadvantage that no all users have a nice english (I don't have a very good english, but I try to use it and learn more), but please, if the project is an international project like Jaws, try to report bugs in English, use babelfish if you need. 50% (or more) of Jaws Developers are from Europe, they speak their language (deutch, italian, etc) but they are trying to use their english to communicate with us (americans).
  • There's another reason that developers hate: unpleasant bugs. Some users report bugs by just saying: "it doesn't works", "it throws this error". So, please, give clear, helpful and informative bug reports. Give the developers more information on how you found the bug, write as much descriptive information as you can, no one will kick you for giving lot of information.
  • Tell developers exactly what you did, if it was an error in the user interface, tell them which buttons and actions you did, if you double clicked a button, everything.

Summary

  • Don't be egoist, you want good software? don't be egoist.
  • Report bugs in the same way the project suggests, don't try to be funny and break the rules.
  • Write useful bug reports.