Open Source
Open Source means that the source code of a software is public visible. Usually, Open Source code can be used for free with some limitation, e.g. the software used open source code should be a open source software, there are limitation of re-development based on the open source code, or the code cannot be used for business purpose for free, and so on.
Most of Open Source projects are under a specific open source license.
In this blog, I will choose Drupal and Linux Kernel as example to show how open source community works.
Drupal
Drupal is an open source content management system(CMS) framework that is written in PHP and it is distributed user the GNU General Public License. Drupal is developed by Drupal community and is free.
In Drupal community, all issues will be reported to https://www.drupal.org/project/issues
Before reporting an issue, the user should create an account and login to drupal.org. After user logged in, the Drupal website will allow user to fill a form and submit the form to drupal.org. Then drupal community will review the issue and assign a status to the issue in the issue page. Depends on different situation, Drupal team may fix the issue or not.
Linux Kernel
Linux kernel is a free and open source operating system kernel. The code in Linux Kernel are under different licenses, e.g. GPL, BSD, MIT, etc.
Linux kernel issues will be listed and reported on https://bugzilla.kernel.org/ . If user wants to report an issue, user must create an account or login to continue. After an issue is reported, the issue will be assigned status of NEW. After Linus and the people in the team tested and verified the bug, they will assign the issue other status like VERIFIED, FIXED, REJECTED, etc.
Both of Linux kernel and Drupal allow public user to report bugs and their team will try to verify and fix the bugs. The advantage is the billion of people on the planet help them to test their software and report bugs on time.
However, there are also some drawbacks for this approach. The team cannot make sure that the “bug” is not caused by user’s skill level. The user may does not have skill to fix an error and they report it as “bug”. In this case, the community needs lots of time to verify and answer user’s questions.
However, open source is the trends of programming. Open Source communities contributed countless valuable projects and software. Also, it helps programmers on the world to improve their coding skills.
Issue observed:
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=203805
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=204873
https://www.drupal.org/project/backfill_formatter/issues/3110229
https://www.drupal.org/project/cloud/issues/3108485
Websites:
Shichao's SPO600 