I discovered a bug in Rhythmbox, which is the music-sorting and playing software on Ubuntu Linux. If you look at the link, I posted the problem on Sunday, the 22nd. Here it is 2 days later, and the problem is fixed. Now, the patch has not yet been posted, but I'm willing to bet that it is well and truly fixed. Why? Because I think the Rhythmbox maintainers had an idea where the problem was as soon as I posted it. It only took a couple of back-and-forth posts to figure out where the problem was. I was even able to test one of the maintainers' hypothesis myself. From there, I was able to post the results of my research back, and away they went.
One of the things that I most loved about this was that they showed me how I, a real newbie in programming and Linux, could capture the data they needed. They then provided me some feedback, asking me more detailed questions, showing me some mistakes I made in collecting the data (very patiently pointed it out, I might add), and continuing to work with me. That was my blinking light. That gave me a sense that something was happening. If the big software companies would take a hint from this, they might learn something.
Then again, maybe not.
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