kSar – Fixing bugs (almost) online

While working with kSar to visulize sar’s statistics, a friend found a bug with kSar.

Most IT people don’t think they can have access to the developers, I reminded my friend that we’re dealing with an open source application and we should report a bug or at least check the bug with the develpers.

He wrote a message in the kSar forums, and the answer, in the form of a new minor version came 4 hours later. We testing the fix and were very happy.

I can just hope all my bugs will be solved so quickly (:

So, please don’t be shy about your problems with free software. Most developers will be happy to get a good bug report and help you. I believe that’s specially true about developers of small applications who are just happy to hear people are using their software.

Getting motivation from other people work and cooperation

Recently, I found it hard to contribute to open source in general and Debian in particular. There are several reasons for that: beginning with less free time to contribute and continuing with feeling my contribution becomes more and more routine and thus less interesting / challenging.

Yesterday I found the time and motivation to upload fixes to 6 of my packages. I thought it might be interesting to share the reasons for this motivation burst, as it can demonstrate how each of us can affect others.

The final trigger was seeing (= getting svn diffs) Baruch Even working on the libhdate package (which is co-maintained as part of debian-hebrew). Prior to that I had people showing interest in my packages, helping with solving bugs, sending patches and even one guy becoming a co-maintainer of a package of mine. Oddly, most of them are ubuntu users.

I’m not looking for others to do my work or do it for me, but getting help is always fun and motivating. Also, working with other people creates commitment as they wait for something you should do, or waiting for you to use what they’ve done. For me this starts a positive snow ball which ends with better packages for me and happier people after receiving credit for their work (usually a changelog entry and a thank you mail).

So go on, and inspire people (: