BugsDoneQuick, July 6-13

This event is inspired by GamesDoneQuick, a major speedrunning competition/convention, where speedrunners from all over the world show their ability to complete games quickly on a stage, for charity.

Likewise, I'm going to try to use my corner of the internet to solve as many bugs as quickly as I can, in freely-available, open-source programs.

Schedule

• ✅ June 23: Practice stream, fixing a bug in Dolphin (KDE) for practice. Here's the VOD!
• ✅ July 1: Practice stream, fixing a few issues in Forgejo for practice. There were some recording issues, but you can see the surviving parts of the VOD here.
• 📆 July 6: Start of BugsDoneQuick event, shorter Sunday stream. Starting around 10:30 UTC; and going for ~4 hours with the first batch of issues to solve.
• 📆 July 7-12: Main part of the BugsDoneQuick event. Starting around 08:00 UTC each day, and going for ~6 hours.
• 📆 July 13: End of BugsDoneQuick event, also a shorter Sunday stream. Starting around 10:30 UTC.
• 🏝️ July 14: Well deserved rest. 😅
• ✉️ July 15-August 15: Off-stream discussion with the maintainers for each of the projects and polishing up the submitted fixes until they are ultimately accepted or rejected. Retrospective posts.

NOTE: Earlier versions of this post had me doing the timezone calculation wrong and saying "16 UTC" instead of "10 UTC". This has now been corrected. Oops!

Questions

What is open-source? Why only open-source projects?

Open-source software is software which is not encumbered by proprietary licenses that limit who is allowed to use it and why. A lot has been said about it already.

I'm passionate about open-source. Making things around open-source makes me happy. And, that's the primary reason why I'm limiting myself to open-source projects.

The other reason is that this is going to be a charity stream, and volunteering to fix neglected issues is one of the best charitable acts I can do.

What are some examples of open-source projects?

There are many programs which are open-source—and a lot of them are software you use and love.

Here are a few examples to get you started:

• Firefox, Chromium (not Chrome, but the two share a lot of code), Ladybug (the browser)(
• Thunderbird, KMail, GNOME Evolution
• LibreOffice/OpenOffice
• Linux kernel (also used in Android) - tho I likely won't be able to do any reasonable bugfix there.
• PeerTube, Mastodon, Pleorama, Pixelfed - and generally the rest of the Fediverse software
• Syncthing, Signal, Lawnchair, Aves Libre - and many more Android apps
• P5.js, D3.js, Vue.js, React; Laravel, Yew (Rust), ... - and a whole lot more programming libraries
• Wordpress, Strapi, 11ty - and other content management system software.
• Zulip, Element, Mattermost, HexChat, Irssi. - and other chat applications
• MuseScore, Audacity/Tenacity, Ardour, Bosca Ceoli, ... - and a few other music-making/editing programs.

And many, many more. Look it up; most open-source apps would say that in their About page!

How are you going to ensure the quality of the code you "speedrun"?

In two ways:

• As a professional programmer, I have a general idea of what it means for a bug fix to be well-polished. So, I'll be making sure that I get all the bug fixes to that level before I submit them and check the issue off as "done".
• I expect that for at least a month after the event, I'll be discussing each of the fixes with the maintainers of the various projects involved. That way, any mistakes will be caught and corrected off-stream.

Overall, having seen the gripes of FOSS maintainers with past events, such as with Hacktoberfest, I'm not looking into ways to create a bunch of pull/merge requests to prove a point; but instead, to work on a few good bugfixes and have fun while doing that. 😃

What charity is your stream going to benefit?

If you are coming from the GamesDoneQuick world, you might be familiar with the fundraisers they run.

Here, at BugsDoneQuick, we are running a different kind of fundraiser, however: if anyone enjoys the stream, they are welcome to donate to one of the projects we are solving the issues of!

Where are you going to stream?

I'll be streaming on PeerTube at @bojidar_bg@watch.bojidar-bg.dev! That way, the whole production process of these livestreams uses as much open-source software as possible - from the operating system (Linux, KDE), through the recording software (OBS), to the server hosting the stream (PeerTube), to the potential viewer running an open-source browser or application (Firefox, Chromium, etc.).

Will there be a green timer?

Yes! With splits even!

Follow me?

If you want to be kept in the loop about BugsDoneQuick, please consider subscribing to this website's Atom feed, or following me on Mastodon.
Also, you could join the #bugsdonequick:matrix.org room on Matrix to chat about the idea, both on- and off- stream!

Also, this page is going to be updated with the most up-to-date links as they become available, so you can bookmark it and add it to your calendar.