Subject: Reporting shareware bugs 24. ***** Q: I found a bug in a shareware or a PD program. How should I report it? A: This is not actually a Frequently Asked Question, but I would like to put forward some personal views on this. Starting with my own programs, all sensible feedback is welcome whether it is emailed or posted. Some of the colleagues on the net may have a slightly different views on reporting the bugs publicly, and I respect also that view, even if I don't personally see anything basically wrong with it as long as the feedback is not malicious or outright incorrect. The first thing to do when you note a bug (or a truly problematic feature), and want to report it, is to recheck your facts. Is it an error you have made, or a simple case of RTFM (you haven't read the documentation properly)? If the bug is still there, then by all means go ahead and report. The second thing to do before reporting to a major shareware author is objectively asking yourself are you just trying to solicit extra support, or are you honestly reporting a bug for the author's benefit. Let me tell you about my own method of giving feedback. When reporting bugs I have had very varying responses from shareware authors. Some are very responsive, some never answer. The method I use (if I feel I have something useful to report) is roughly the following. If I can find out the email address of the author I send an email report. If I cannot find the email address I leave things be (I'm frankly too busy to go through the extra trouble of ordinary paper mail). If I get a confirmation of the receipt (or have at sometime had useful exchanges with the author), then ok. If I don't get any reaction (or haven't had any previously), I let things lie, but if I ever have further feedback, I won't send it. Instead I send an enquiry telling that I have this bug report, and ask the author if s/he is interested about getting my bug report. If I still get no response, I won't bother send that author any feedback ever again. Incidentally, I have compiled a list of the addresses of MS-DOS PD & SW authors reachable on or from Internet. This list is available as ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/pd2/author35.zip. --------------------------------------------------------------------