Most developers who ask for bug reports from the general public don’t actually want bug reports from the general public. I’ve noticed this for a long time, but only recently have I decided to actually document the level of their failure to respond to bug reports or to generally care about the quality of their software projects.
Here’s list of bugs I’ve submitted for various programs, ordered by the amount of time they’ve gone unfixed. (Should any of them actually be fixed, I’ll update this page. Don’t hold your breath.)
Maybe listing them here will shame developers into action.
Inkscape is a free vector art program, much like (the commercial) Adobe Illustrator. Unlike Adobe Illustrator, the developers of Inkscape decided not to use OS-native widgets, and therefore it’s filled with UI bugs. They’re probably trying, but there’s simply no way to make a bug-free program if you’re not using the OS-native widgets. It can’t be done.
Bug: FileChooserDialog sorting order on OSX
Submitted: Unknown (but some time before 2007-01-01)
Comment: This is the bug that started it all, the first bug I decided to bookmark and actually check up on. Mainly because I was so blown away by the failure of a program published in 2006 to sort alphabetically! In the tradition of all crappy developers who don’t give a crap whether bugs get fixed, the original bug on Sourceforge was deleted (made a “private artifact type”, whatever the fuck that is) without resolution or even comment. The “pass the buck” bug (linked above) received several comments initially, but to date hasn’t even been confirmed or triaged.
This program was recommended to me as a syntax-highlighting Javascript code editor. The person who recommended it failed to inform me that it was a buggy piece of crap that couldn’t even get the most basic of GUI concepts implemented correctly. (Natch, it also doesn’t use the OS-native toolset.) Attention Notepad++ developers: This is the year 2008, menu bars have now been perfected for two decades!
Bug: Tall Language Menu Obscures Neighboring Menus
Submitted: 2008-01-06
Comment: The developer originally responded with an extremely lame workaround. I re-opened the bug, no activity since.
Bug: Double-click to open causes elevation dialog
Submitted: 2008-01-06
Comment: No activity whatsoever.
Ah, Slashdot, the tech news site everybody loves to hate. Administrated by “editors” who don’t edit and, frankly, have absolutely no clue what the word “usability” even means. They also apparently have no QA staff, not even enough to test on Firefox. Even after recruiting a professional web developer to re-design their clunky site into a slightly-less-clunky (and vastly more usable) site, they then decided it would be a good idea to undo all that work.
After a slight altercation with one of the Slashdot developers, I decided to actually submit some bugs. It’s been a few months, so I call it fair game.
Bug: Grey “thread outline” doesn’t line-up with post titles
Submitted: 2008-04-10
Bug: Floating divs graphically corrupt when scrolled
Submitted: 2008-04-10
Bug: Scrollbar floating DIV is retained for unrelated DIV
Submitted: 2008-04-10
Bug: When font size is increased, floating DIV headers misalign
Submitted: 2008-04-10
Bug: Grey boxes don’t entirely contain threads
Submitted: 2008-04-10
Bug: Reply and Parent buttons do not look like buttons
Submitted: 2008-04-10
Bug: “This changes weekly” header on Reading prefs looks wrong
Submitted: 2008-04-10
Bug: People modifier Select fields are too short
Submitted: 2008-04-10
Bug: Slashdot ignores collapsed section preference
Submitted: 2008-04-22
Bug: “Read rest of comment” shows up when not needed
Submitted: 2008-05-15
Comment: I think this one may be fixed, at least, the example I posted in the bug no longer shows the same problem it originally did. That said, the bug’s still open, so it’s still on the list.
Bug: Slashdot “Idle” template unnecessarily buggy
Submitted: 2008-05-26
Comment: The bug’s title is flamebait, but Sourceforge doesn’t give you a wide-enough field to type in useful titles anyway, and the bug report does give specific examples.
Bug: Poor usability of Sourceforge site discourages bug submissio
Submitted: 2008-05-26
Comment: Let’s get down to brass tacks. Sourceforge sucks. Sourceforge sucks long and hard. If you’re relying on Sourceforge for bug submissions, you’re making a statement to the world, and that statement is: “I hate you.”
Do you know why every single one of those Slashdot bugs listed above with screenshots have the images stored on my server? Because every single time I try to upload an image to Sourceforge, it gives me a weirdly vague error. Remember the “private artifact type” from good ol’ Inkscape’s bug tracker? Things like that make me think Sourceforge wasn’t even written by human beings.
A Slashdot developer passed this list of bugs and annoyances to the team that maintains Sourceforge, which I suppose is the best result that could come from it. (Slashdot most likely could not move to a different bug tracking system, as they are owned by the same parent company that owns Sourceforge.)
In conclusion, if you don’t want to see or fix bugs, don’t ask for bugs. That’s all.
Post a Comment