Bugs Are Good

by FND

Bugs are an opportunity for the community to reveal itself.

Back in the TiddlyWiki days, cdent pointed out:

When the community finds a bug, the community has fulfilled a major aspect of its destiny.

You might argue that’s just restating Linus’s law. However, the school of cdent goes one step further: Bugs are good for a healthy community. That is, perfectionism in (open-source) software might not be desirable because flaws present an opportunity for dialog. Depending on the circumstances, conversations of this kind might even be worth sacrificing backwards compatibility.