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When it doesn't work, you get helpful bug reports *
That is people helping you
If I build something for me, and share it with others, and I never have a problem with it but they report bugs… is that helping me?
Yes. Why bother sharing if you're not trying to help others?
I am helping others already, by sharing it. It comes without warranty or guarantees.
Personally, when I publish software, I’m happy to receive bug reports and work on them most of the time. But users use tools lots of ways, and sometimes they’re using it differently to how I designed it to be used. Their bug is my feature.
You don't have to fix them, at least not all of them. You can just add an "open for contributions" or "help wanted" label on GitHub and let other people deal with it.
I sometimes wonder if you could make a name for yourself by being the Johnny Appleseed of FOSS. Go around to many projects and fixing a longstanding open ticket on each.
You'll have tons of github repos and stars, if nothing else.
People definitely do this, it's not uncommon. I also need to spend more time contributing to FOSS, it's a great idea.
That’s a great point, and that’s often exactly what I do for bugs of features that I find to be unlikely or uninteresting. My projects are always open to contributions, but I don’t provide free support and my projects aren’t paid for, so you shouldn’t expect immediate bug resolution
Absolutely. It helps identity bugs that others may experience. A good bug report will make it easy for you to reproduce
Yes, because tomorrow you may face the same bug.