I keep seeing otherwise intelligent people1{#footlink1:1251967506123.footnote} encounter problems with software but never actually report them to anyone who could fix them. For commercial software opening a support ticket takes just a few minutes and usually gets the issue resolved pretty quickly so you can stop wasting time suffering through it or complaining about it. For open source software it’s often a bit more difficult – you need to join the users mailing list and ask questions there, follow up if you don’t get a response and maybe even put together a solid bug report. Still nothing ominous.

Of course, the opposite effect happens too. Once someone finds they can report an issue and get it fixed for them, they often go a bit crazy reporting things – even before they’ve done a bit of investigation to confirm they’ve place the blame on the right bit of software2{#footlink2:1251967610948.footnote}.

I’ve been watching both these things happen within Ephox lately and it’s amazing how many things you can get solved quickly when you do get the right balance between reporting too soon and reporting too late (or not at all). It’s a skill I think we need to work to improve.

1 – Myself included sometimes.↩

2 – I’m sure there should be a good quip about the bug being in your code rather than the library/compiler/OS/etc but I can’t find one.↩