Hi P.O.,

Well, not everybody seems to appreciate the "invalid" treatment, see
https://sourceforge.net/p/oorexx/bugs/1976/?limit=25#2ef9 as a recent
example.

To state the obvious, when somebody spends her time detecting and
documenting a bug, she's working for free for the project, she's giving to
the community.

For example, somebody who detects a malfunction in the test suite has to:
a) know that the test suite exists; b) have the test suite installed; c)
have run the test suite (which takes some time), and d) document the said
malfunction.

All of this requires a non-inconsiderable skill set. "Invalid" ---says
Google, following Oxford--- means "not legally recognized because it
contravenes a regulation or law" (as a noun, it means "a person made weak
or disabled by illness or injury").

To summarize, we have a certain user, let's call her A. A has a
considerable skillset. A has donated her free time and resources to the
community to report what she considers to be a bug. This bug happens to
refer to the test suite. Then A is told that her contribution is not
legally recognized "because it contravenes a regulation or law".

To me, this looks like a fantastic recipe to alienate A from the community.
Specially when, as far as I know, there is no established protocol to
report bugs in the test suite.

Words are not meaningless identifiers. They are important, because they
happen to have meanings. Meanings are dangerous: they can please and
hurt, they can bind and unbind. When used wrongly, they can alienate very
valuable people. People we need, because we are not precisely a huge
community.

My impression is that new, different names should be chosen, with some
urgency. Names that do not have these ugly connotations: "Invalid", for
example, is a toxic word. And the work that somebody has done for the
community should always be acknowledged and appreciated. When I work on a
project, the results R of my work may be wrong, but the fact F that I have
worked can never be wrong. "Invalid" might apply to R, but never to F. One
has to be careful.

  Josep Maria

Missatge de ooRexx <[email protected]> del dia dt., 17 de set. 2024 a les
23:03:

> Hi Joseph Maria,
>
> If the reason for the behavior emanates from a change to the code it is a
> bug and should be reported in the bug tracker, as you did.
>
> Bugs in the test cases are not considered bugs and will be closed as
> “invalid” by the developers, only bugs in the interpreter are considered
> bugs. Hence “Feature”. One can report them to this list if the developers
> did not already spot them.
>
> Hälsningar/Regards/Grüsse,
> ooRexx
> [email protected]
>
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