Comment 44 for bug 51043

Sebastien Bacher wrote on 2009-10-26:
"The reasoning you use doesn't stand, you can't dictate people to work on nautilus, the one working on compiz or ubuntuone would probably not fix this bug either if they were not doing that, they do things they are motivated doing or would do nothing"

And that's the problem of open source. There's no one telling dictating developers to fix bugs. What you're saying is completely right: "they do things they are motivated doing or would do nothing" and that's the problem: Developers want to develop new features as that's way more fun than the boring work of fixing bugs. That's why there are so many bugs in our operating system that exist for more than five years, but still aren't fixed. The developers who wrote those applications just don't want to fix those existing bugs, because it's boring. Instead they just develop some new features, because it's fun.

But who's going the fix those bugs? The developers don't want to fix them. It's right, developers of Compiz of Ubuntu One are not going those bugs, as they are working on their own applications. What's left? Those people like me, who are not a programmer and aren't able to fix those bugs. But if you ask the developers to fix the bugs in their application, they just say: "If it bothers you, fix it yourself." I'm not a programmer. How am I going to fix those bugs? Besides that, why SHOULD I fix the bug myself? It their application. They released an application with annoying bugs, so it's their task to fix those bugs.

But the developer isn't paid and he does what he likes to do, which is developing new features. That's the problem: there's no one who tells those developers: "Go fix those bugs." That's problem of software developed by people who aren't paid.