I sent a patch to a bigger and more known software company, now defunct. I ended up writing some rude comments in the bug submitting form, after being forced to enter endless data about me, the company that I worked for and a lot of information about how to reproduce the error. Not proud of it, but I understand the GP: you're helping them and they treat you poorly.
They included the fix in the next version of the tool. I later noticed it was incomplete, but this time I just made the correction locally.
It is quite maddening to have to provide personal information to report a bug. My city stopped allowing anonymous reports of broken traffic lights, so every time I report one (much rarer now that they’ve made it harder) I always give bogus information.
Interesting. I feel like it's something I've only seen very occasionally - I don't remember when I last noticed one. Maybe you just have a much higher density of traffic lights where you live, which would make it more common to see failures; and/or maybe they're a different type or differently maintained.
Hey look Jimbob! The consultant says if we added obnoxious paperwork requirements, there'd be fewer broken traffic lights! I don't know how that's possible, but by-golly it worked!
They included the fix in the next version of the tool. I later noticed it was incomplete, but this time I just made the correction locally.