On Fri, Aug 16, 2013 at 1:04 PM, Gabbe Nord <gabbe.nord@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Yes, those are all fair points. What about the rest of the questions? Lets take the non-tools for example, as you're the author of them. With the non-tools, what do you think users (current as well as potential future ones) could do better in terms of bug reporting? How can a user (read: one without the ability or desire to learn how to code) contribute to the non-tools?
Bug reports are an entirely different problem. It's very hard to get a quality bug report. They vary quite a bit. Often they are of the form "X doesn't work properly". That's about as helpful as a handful of sand in the eyes. It doesn't define 'properly', it doesn't explain how the user determined that X doesn't meet that definition, it doesn't say what version of X, where it was aquired, how it was built, on what system it was running etc, and it is just lacking information in general. On the flip side, lots of bug reports (this is especially true of automatically generated ones) include pages and pages of backtraces and dumps, but don't give any other context, such as what the user was trying to accomplish at the time (often an extremely important piece of information!).
I have an article about how to prepare bug reports here:
But the issue has been covered at length elsewhere. Often the backtraces etc are not even required, what is required is full disclosure on what the user did and why--preferably without judgements or accusations (these often backfire anyway, as a fair percentage of bugs can indeed be attributed to user error, system configuration, or some other thing that is completely outside the control of the developer).
Personally, I respond best to interesting ideas. If someone has a use case for my software that I know I'll never personally need, but it's an interesting an appropriate use case, I'm very likely to go ahead and put in the time to implement it. Donations are always rewarding as well, they are a very tangible way of saying 'thank you' and 'I like this'. Lots of people will /say/ they love your work, but few will prove it by contibuting (anything). As is true of most projects, I don't get many donations (that's another topic entirely!), but I have had a few power users donate considerable sums, and discussing changes with them feels a lot more like collaboration than it does answering demands from those who contribute nothing.
I'm also very likley to accept patches, and willing to offer lots of help understanding the code and design for those who want to extend the software--even if it's in a direction that I don't agree with and wouldn't merge into the mainline.
Testing is also appreciated. The best testing is acutal use and lots of bug reports! It sucks to put out a 'stable' release and *then* get the bug reports.
Hope some of this was helpful!
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