Over the weekend I did an update on my Elive Compiz powered main PC. I didn’t realize it at the time but the update was actually an upgrade (I ran the update via Syanptic not apt-get - otherwise I would have known) and I wound up running the unstable version.

I know a lot of people who use open source every day, from OpenOffice to the GIMP and Linux, open source has something for everyone. Recently I was asked how could someone give back to the developers of Free Software?

I read glyphobet's blog, itemizing frustrations he's had reporting bugs to Ubuntu. While I've not had frustrating experiences reporting bugs to Ubuntu, I've reported bugs to a lot of different open source projects, and had more than a few closed in a way I wasn't happy with, so I can definitely sympathize. I hope in Ubuntu these sorts of experiences are the exception, but certainly there's always room to improve.

In my own experience at having bugs closed in ways I thought were inappropriate or incorrect, while I was initially angry about it, after reflecting I realized in each case it was really a consequence that I didn't understand that particular project's bug philosophy and had filed the bug in a way that didn't adhere to their guidelines.