On Tuesday 24 March 2009 07:40:02 Arthur Pemberton wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 12:18 AM, Eli Wapniarski
> <eli@orbsky.homelinux.org> wrote:
> > On Tuesday 24 March 2009 02:34:21 Arthur Pemberton wrote:
> >> On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 2:57 PM, Anne Wilson <cannewilson@googlemail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >> > No - I tend to file bugs only if I know I can reproduce them.  Once I
> >> > had
> >> > fixed that specific message problem it never happened again.  I'm
> >> > totally
> >> > convinced that it was a gpg problem, mal-formed key or something.
> >>
> >> Which is why I posted here. KMail just goes "poof" when it crashes. No
> >> console output. No known log files. No KCrash.
> >>
> >> I can't file a bug saying that Kmail vanishes, sometimes.
> >
> > Yes you can. Indicate that you are willing to attach, of course if there
> > isn't anything confidential to in the folder to send the email file to them
> > for their inspeciton.
> >
> > Eli
>
> I haven't found a single email which I can use to replicate the problem 100%
>
Communicate with the developers. If you don't it won't get fixed. Ask for guidence to allow them to help you get the info they need. Be instant.


Look, as an aside (ok... a long aside), I know that you already know this, and that I'm preaching to the choir, but opensource is a collaborative effort by the entire community. Complaints and praises, bug reports, feature requests, shortcomings, winfalls, etc. Its the only way that this particular enterprise works. If we aren't willing to accept communications no matter how important or trivial it might seem this enterprise fails. While we get a lovely sandbox for developers to try to showoff, if the end product is not useful and therefore not used, well then so what. It becomes a practise in navel gazing and now lets all get abused by Microsoft's non existant technical support. Which of course 75% of the software on our computers will be pirated because, lets be honest who has $20,000 (maybe I'm exagerating - but only just a little) to lay down on OSes, Productivity Software, Games, Hardware, etc. Without the back and forth communications however annoying or frustrating it may be, how do you expect the end result to improve to remain stable, to remain reliable and secure.


Whether any developer likes it or not once its in the public domain its out there. It becomes a service and people expect the software to work. And if it doesn't, well then, of course, anyone and everyone is free to go elsewhere. The thing is, as everyone is well aware of the statistics, they do. Because most users aren't willing to put up with the rudeness that many developers exhibit when they are "interupted" by another annoying bug report. I'm sure that everyone has gotten more than just a little upset when someone has broken your focus while concentration on a challenging problem. I tend not accept the rudeness and get rude right back. Things settle down, everybody has vented and we roll up our sleeves and get the job done.


I'm a little bit old fashioned. I believe that striving for excellence has to be more than just words. It doesn't mean perfect. It means lets get it do what its supposed to do the best that we can. And if at first you don't succeed, try and try again. Especially with things as worthwhile as opensource software and Linux.


Communicate with the developers. See what if anything they have to say. Its important.


Eli Wapniarski



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