Throwing in an idea (probably it was discussed before though)

[Shachar Shemesh]

John Smith wrote:

>> Because it's a tedious and boring task to narrow down those unknown
>> bugs in closed-source apps. And that's exactly why we ask you (since
>> you got access to the sources) to tell us what the application is
>> trying to do which doesn't work in Wine...
>
> Ahem. And how long it usually takes to fix the bug for not-top-10
> application? And please, don't suggest to fix it ourselves - it is not
> going to happen in corporate environment.

If you give a scenario that is easilly reproduceable, it is rare that
problems go more than a couple of days unfixed. Sometimes you hit
something that requires a rewirte of half the relevant subsystem, but
usually it's just a small ommision, and is easilly fixed.

The thing that takes so much time is tracking the exact behavior that
goes wrong.

> Also I remember you've just told that fixing bugs is easy - why does
> it still exist then?

Fixing bugs is easy. Finding them is not. It's exactly the same with
proprietary software too, btw. If a user reports "this doesn't work", my
experience is that you spend two weeks in QA trying to reproduce the
problem, half a day fixing it, and a couple more weeks testing the
solution. It's fairly rare that the relations are much different, but do
let us in on your experience.

All we are saying is "pin-point the problem for us".

             Shachar