In the process of setting up a collective video editing studio, I looked into software for scheduling shared resources. I finally found a good, open source solution called Online Resource Scheduler.

But, I pretty quickly became stumped in the process of installing the thing, which is in the process of the newest version being in beta. Since I wasn't already in "production" I decided to risk it and try the beta. I was starting to regret that but I snooped around and discovered a clue, yet didn't know why it was happening. So I posted to the forum for the ORS sourceforge project and the main developer went back and forth with me for a bit and had a fix. in less than 24 hours!
Someone else on the forum complimented me for finding the bug in the beta.

For all my years of experience using open source software and exhorting the ideology of it, this is the first time something like that has happened, and it made me feel happy to be contributing, if not in code than in testing. I thought back to Eric Raymond's idea in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" that open source is better because there are many eyes looking at the code. So, I'm happy to be one of those pairs of eyes today.

I just read a good paper called Fundamental Issues with Open Source Development. It's interesting but pretty familiar.

It's sad but every once in a while someone will write a paper like this that hits the nail on the head about why open source software isn't quite making it out there to normal people, and a lot of people, myself included, say, yeah, yeah, those are definitely problems. But, nothing really changes and then another paper saying the same thing comes out, 9 months later, or whatever. I guess hackers will be hackers. Or maybe hackers will be slackers. hah.