Maybe I am off, but that read almost like sarcasm (see reference to "copious free time" in fine print).
The phrase "copious free time" is itself sarcastic, but it usually just implies "please be patient" rather than "I won't do it".
I Will File Bugs for You (2014)
11–20 of 46 posts
Re: I Will File Bugs for You (2014)
#12Interesting idea, letting someone more familiar with the project make a bug report. It's almost like crowdsourcing tech support.
I wrote about how open source project bug trackers aren't as inviting as they might be a few months ago: https://www.benburwell.com/posts/open-bug-tracking-empowers-....
Re: I Will File Bugs for You (2014)
#13nice. however a more scalable approach would be a metabug site where people could post "it doesn't work" freeform text, and volunteers could accept a bug and resolve it when they had refiled it with the correct project.
uh, I think they made that, and called it StackOverflow
Re: I Will File Bugs for You (2014)
#14He could get paid for doing this over at https://www.pay4bugs.com
Re: I Will File Bugs for You (2014)
#15Interesting idea, letting someone more familiar with the project make a bug report. It's almost like crowdsourcing tech support. I wrote about how open source project bug trackers aren't as inviting as they might be a few months ago: https://www.benburwell.com/posts/open-bug-tracking-empowers-... .
I agree that JIRA is probably not what you want as your user-facing bug tracker, but Bugzilla seems significantly less complicated, and the github issue tracker is easier still (though I think it is over-simplified for a user-facing bug tracker).
Someone above mentioned wanting free form bug trackers, but this runs into the problem of bad bug reports. You want bug reports that you can reproduce, or at least some artifacts such as crash dumps or stack traces that give you something to analyze. Short of that you're left guessing about what the problem is. Hence, bug trackers tend to ask people for more information up front so that there is less back and forth.
Re: I Will File Bugs for You (2014)
#16article text is 190 pixels wide in 1600px wide browser window, maybe it should file this bug for me too?
Re: I Will File Bugs for You (2014)
#17Y'know what, I'll extend the same offer. I'll find any free software project and file a bug. I do it enough for myself, I can do it for someone else.
jordigh@octave.org
Tell me which bug to file.
Re: I Will File Bugs for You (2014)
#18He's not only filing the bug, but also attempting to reproduce it. In the vein of doing things that don't scale, this idea is a clear winner. It does seem like a valuable service: The project would get a verified/reproduced bug report from a known entity, and the reporter would get their issue addressed just by sending an email. Under/over on how long before he can't offer this for free?
It was first posted on `14 August 2014`. So my guess is no one has really taken him up on the offer.
Well, it's getting a lot of attention now.
Re: I Will File Bugs for You (2014)
#19In 2011 I made a similar offer, to write patches for any documentation improvements to Ruby: http://blog.steveklabnik.com/posts/2011-08-22-im-making-it-d...
I think overall, about a dozen people took me up on it over the years.
Re: I Will File Bugs for You (2014)
#20I like this. Less so for his actual offer, but more because he is calling attention to how hard it is to do this for people who don't want to deal with a "bug tracking system... optimized for people who spend all day every day working with it".
It would be nice if there was a single, easy to use site for mere mortals to enter bug reports (and others can comment on them, vote on them, process them, etc).....one sort of like Github or StackOverflow, where we all sort of agree to use that site.