Posts getting ignored (was F10 rpm of grub2 completely broken)

[Michael Schwendt]

On Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:16:38 +0000, Sam wrote:

> I don't speak for any kind of majority, but my contribution to
> "making" Fedora is pretty much zilch. I file the occasional bug, I
> help out other users where I can, but I'm not currently a Fedora
> Developer or Fedora Packager.

Problem reports _are_ contributions, too, provided that they are filed in
a relevant tracking system. With the added note that the "better" the
reports and the more responsive the reporter, the more useful the reports
can get. Reporting bugs and attaching good backtraces in bugzilla is much
preferred over bitching and moaning on mailing-lists on message boards, of
course.

Testers and bug reporters are an important part of the Fedora community
even. Some pick packages they like and increase the involvement by working
together with the package maintainer more closely. This can go as far as
creating a Fedora account and participating in bug triaging or becoming a
co-maintainer or a specific package's bugzilla master.

It is in the nature of bugs that the person who is bitten may be the only
one (or one of a very few) who can tell more about an incident. The
person's commitment can be very important. The assumption, that thousands
of other users would be affected by the same bug, often is wrong. The
community works best if whoever is hit by a bug contributes a bit of
personal time and effort on helping with locating and squashing that
particular bug. Don't rush, but don't treat other people like your slaves
either. To sit and wait and hope for magic and other people to work on
your bugs it can lead to frustration -- when discovering that a bug has
survived and is still found in the next distribution release for whatever
reasons there may be.