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Comment by MakeUsersWant | Hacker News Reader

So that is why so many OSS projects are full of bugs and horrible usability. In the past, I have tried to help with clear, reproducible bug reports. Quite often I spent an hour tracking down a bug, writing up why it matters, and then got ignored or dismissed.

Those OSS projects that deliver a quality product, also took my bug reports seriously (and sometimes disagreed).

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> So that is why so many OSS projects are full of bugs and horrible usability.

Possibly, but not necessarily. What is certain is that no developer who gives you free stuff has any obligation to fix bugs nor to submit themselves to any low-key bullying from users of said free stuff about how to spend their time and develop the software they decide to share with others.

I agree! But let’s not discount the value being provided by bug reporters who give a superb description and excellent reproducibility. They just wrote a codeable test case, which is valuable free stuff, ie like for like.

TL;DR;

FOSS Zeolots: everyone should use FOSS! Micro$oft is evil!

Also FOSS Zeolots: Oh you have a bug? Screw you. You're getting it for free. Stop complaining. I'm busy making a new icon.

OSS is great. But until this attitude is killed, it will continue to hover just above "who gives a shit" for anything other than developers

FWIW i am not a FOSS zealot. If anything some of the software i find enjoyable to use is not FOSS (but sadly a lot of it is older software, largely because of user hostile modern trends - see Electron, phone-home DRM, adware, etc - but also because newer versions or alternatives simply have worse UX and/or bloated to almost unusability) and really my comments come more from a "you are entitled to what you pay for" stance.

I certainly won't disagree with hostile modern software trends. I just think if FOSS maintainers are accepting the responsibility of maintaining the project, they should accept the responsibility of taking bug reports seriously. Everyone knows they are no fun. And everyone knows they aren't flashy. And the maintainers are more than welcome to ignore them. But in doing so, they can't complain about people not accepting consumer facing FOSS. It's a package deal.

People are not a hive mind, some developers may ignore bugs, others may complain about end user oriented FOSS acceptance and perhaps some do both, but chances are these two groups are separate (and in larger projects you may even have people under more than one of these groups).

Also unless someone has explicitly expressed they are taking such a responsibility you describe, such a responsibility only exists in some people's minds. A lot of programmers want to share free stuff they made and stop there.

Your claim is common, but wrong. Approximately none of the major technology companies do more than rudimentary call-center service for bug reports from consumers.

If anything, the entitlement you express is counterproductive, because sometimes people like you convince open-source developers that their time is better spent catering to your sense of entitlement instead of their software.

My claim is common bc it's the truth.

Source: I am a maintainer of several projects. Some that are used extensively. And I take bug reports seriously, even if I can't always get to them right away.

"it's free, go away" is a real problem. Denying it won't make anything any better or help FOSS get adopted for anything other than servers.

I have experienced it many times before, and almost every time I've gone back to propriety software and breathed a sigh of relief.

> "it's free, go away" is a real problem.

Characterizing this as a problem is like accepting free candies from someone and then complaining that you were not given more candies.

No, it's like telling the candy maker that their candy made them sick or otherwise left something to be desired. If the candy maker cares about making good candy, that can be useful information, even if they may not have time to do something about it. If the candy maker cares about making mediocre-to-bad candy freely available, then they will say "it's free, go away."

No, it is exactly as i wrote above, the idea isn't to complain back, it is that you get shit for free and you have no standing to demand for anything more than what you got. If free candy makes you sick maybe next time do not accept free candy from strangers, hm?

(of course i knew someone would try to reply with a "No, it is like <insert post ignoring the point here>" but decided to go with it anyway)

Where did 'StaticRedux say anything about demanding anything?

It's perfectly possible to report a bug without demanding that it be fixed.

Your source is inapplicable. You are not a statistical universe.

Also, "it's free, go away" is a straw man, because the "go away" part is also nearly universal within proprietary software. Try opening a ticket regarding a bug in Word, or AutoCAD, or so on.

The real difference? Those closed products also have closed bug trackers, so you don't get to see all the times users were ignored or told to pound sand.

This "real problem" exists entirely in your head.

If you do write a clear bug report, with a stack trace (with symbols) and reproduction steps and such, then a developer is much more likely to give your bug the time of day. In the end, though, a patch is worth a thousand tickets.

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