from Hacker News

Dr. Richard Hipp responds to a bug report (2012)

by bilalhusain on 7/11/21, 1:36 PM with 5 comments

  • by gnufx on 7/11/21, 11:04 PM

    Probably the point is the whole thread, not just the linked response.

  • by jh86 on 7/11/21, 11:48 PM

    I have encountered the same attitude in a very small project I took over maintenance of.

    There can be a degree of entitlement in users, I think even more so if they don’t know _how_ they can help.

    Many of us have been under the gun to fix problems in software we haven’t written, and working through that can be challenging and frustrating.

    It blows my mind that Richard both provided a fix and also caused the reporter to re-evaluate how he was communicating.

  • by thyrsus on 7/12/21, 3:53 AM

    I'm not sure I detect the grouchiness in the bug report, although I probably would have closed with a line like "Thank you for your work!" which might be omitted when reporting bugs in paid software. For free software, bug reports are part of how we contribute back to the community. For paid software, bug reports are part of why we aren't paying more for the software, and the fix improves the capital asset of the owner, rather than being a contribution to the community.

  • by neolog on 7/12/21, 3:50 AM

    Is the complaint just about

    > It seems to me that there is no reason for doing so.

    That seems really mild unless I'm missing something.