A good video, and very insightful view of Open Source.

My question though, is what is the "Microsoft" angle, on the following question/statement.


If I, as a developer, find that there is a bug, in {component-X}, in {product-Y} that Microsoft made, even though I found the bug, and even though I *may* be able to fix the bug, I have no avenue to do so.

I can report (although not easily) to Microsoft that the bug exists, but I do not have any public way to track it, and the turnaround time for the fix, is *very* long, *if* I even get a fix.

In the OSS model, I can report it (easily), I can actually go and find the bug in the code, and report to the developer, oh, it's this method, on line #456 of file xyz,... (thus developers can find and fix it faster)

Additionally, I can actually create a patch, (for myself... if it is just purely a frustrating bug), or submit it to the OSS community to be tested, and included in a new release.


PS I'm seriously not trying to bash here, I'm just noting what I find frustrating about closed software.

E.g. I like Office, I like Excel, but it drives me *insane*, that Excel will DELETE contents off the Windows clipboard, if I press Esc, while I have content highlighted on my worksheet.... I pressed Esc, to get rid of the flashing highlight on my content, that I copied to the clipboard... but when I go to any other application to paste my copied content, its gone!

thanks