Today I became a little more involved in FOSS. Until now I had just been a user of FOSS without giving back. But two days ago I did what can be considered the simplest action in FOSS, I filed a bug report. Actually, I filed two bug reports! Why is this more than just complaining? And what’s so useful about it? Well, since FOSS developers are working for free, they have to do most of the coding in their free time. So they don’t have time to go over every single scenario looking for bugs. Heck, the Windows programmers ARE paid and they don’t have time to go over every single scenario. So, by submitting bug reports, you can help programmers find problems. They may also not know how annoying a bug is, unless people complain about it.

One of my bugs had to do with how KDE desktop icons are missing a crucial parameter to keep them from displaying in Gnome. It annoys me to have 2 trash cans, one of which does nothing. The other has to do with Wine. The best thing about it, is that my bug reports are already getting responses.

So, the next time something bugs you in a program, think about submitting a bug report.