Reporting Defects in Proprietary Software

I, like just about everyone else on the planet, find bugs in proprietary software. Sometimes I like to report them to the vendor. One thing that really annoys me is how hard it is to report a bug. Often these sites have no Contact Us about Gaping Holes In Our Software, or more frequent Contact Us regarding Potential Software Problems.

This is even more the case for non-software companies that produce software. Often to accompany their hardware. I shall use Nokia in my example. I would still say that they are a non-software company (they make phones) but are heading in the direction of being at least partially a software company (they are trying to buy Trolltech) and invest in other software companies like Symbian.

Nowhere on their site was a place to report a defect in any of their software products. In the end I sent an email with the defect report to the customer service people responsible for my phone and asked them to forward it on. Not an ideal solution and normally if it gets to this point I don't bother. Today I must be feeling extra kind.

At this point I would state my hard-line position and say something like: Seriously, if you produce software in any form provide a mechanism by which users can report bugs in your software. An email address is usually enough for me. A potentially better solution is to make use of Windows Error Reporting. I've never used it, but I can't see how it couldn't be useful. Every little bit of information regarding your applications reliability in the field is useful. Note that WER is only useful for crashing or hanging apps.

The problem is that non-software companies that produce software, traditionally, don't have organisation practices around defect reporting, management and the eventual software evolution that occurs from that. The smaller or less mature the company is, the greater the chance of them not having such practices.

There is not much you can do about that. Supporting software is an expensive process. Even if they wanted to, it may not be possible for them to setup the requisite infrastructure. Some may argue that they should have thought of this before getting in the game. That doesn't change the fact that the software is already written, and if the vendor has gone bankrupt then you have zero chance.

What about the concept of a open defect registry? Where users can report problems with bugs against the software that they use. It would mean that defect is documented somewhere but doesn't solve the following problems:

1. doesn't mean the developer will fix it
2. someone has to manage the defects being report to handle duplicates or non-a-defect
3. the service would effectively be doing the work of software companies for free
4. still doesn't help if the vendor is out of business
   

The first issue applies to defects reported by formal process with the vendor. You can't help that. The second two points could be solved by charge vendors a nominal flat fee to access the defect information regarding their software. This does two things, pays for someone to manage defects and secondly allow for the operational costs to be spread out over many organisations. Reducing the cost of defect management across the board.

The final problem of vendor's going out of business. What we need on top of that is an open source graveyard where applications that are still being used but are no longer supported have the code release to the public. They are kept at a common location allowing open-source developers to revive them to fix bugs or extend per demand.

Eventual advantages of this process allow users to rate the importance of a defect, giving vendors better visibility into the top 20% of defects. An API for automate defect reporting by software and better software all around.

note: This wasn't intended to be a post about a shared service of defect reporting. Train of thought blogging, ftw!