Why you should add your open source projects to the Utopian bug hunting whitelist

Since joining the Utopian team as a moderator in the bug-hunting category, I have reviewed over six hundred contributions. During this time I have picked up a thing or two on issues that are unique to the open source community.

I have learned that open source projects are seldom tested for bugs before and after release, and even when tested it is at a much later date after a large chunk of the users have lost interest and moved on to projects offering similar or perceived better service.

The sad truth, however, is that it takes time to carefully search and dig up the bugs so often associated with low user retention rates and as a result, a slack in the number of downloads.

Take the example of a grocery store that has its apples supplied by a farmer up north. Now if a percentage of the apple gets bad before reaching the point of delivery and the manager not aware, sell the bad apples. The affected customer even when refunded may decide at a later time to patronize a different store.

It may not be the best analogy but as with the hypothetical manager, it is especially very easy to miss the bugs when it’s your own project.

After all, it’s your code and you are confident it works just as you originally implemented it to. Well because you’ve been at it for months, adding, deleting, debugging and occasionally taking that satisfactory coffee at each break.

But there is always that advantage of getting trusted opinions from an expert party, charged with the sole purpose of finding the flaws in your almost perfect project.

Here’s where the bug hunters at Utopian come in. Good news is, you are not paying for these services, bug hunters on your project are compensated by the Utopian Reward System, and these rewards are based on the bug severity level.

What is bug hunting

_{source: matt quin - unsplash}

Bug hunting is the act of vigorously searching and testing to find bugs and vulnerabilities in websites or mobile apps. In a bug hunt, testers carry out functional testing, checking each function implemented in the app or website with the sole purpose of finding defects or confirming compatibility.

To detect the bugs in a website or application, hunters employ various strategies. Some would intentionally use a workflow contrary to the one suggested by an application, or filling in a form incorrectly to expose errors and security vulnerabilities.

Bug hunters test software from the user’s perspective, they might enter alphabetic characters into form fields that are clearly designed to handle numeric characters. They might input special characters in a username or password field, and can intentionally lose mobile data coverage while using an application.

Bug hunting on Utopian

As you may already know, Utopian.io is a platform that basically rewards people for open source projects, whether you’re a developer, a translator, a bug hunter, graphic designer or even if you just have ideas that you wish to share.

These open source contributions are classified into various categories, one of which is bug hunting. The Bug Hunting category accepts contributions on request only. This means contributions in this category are rewarded only if they are linked to a task request or are being submitted to projects present in our Whitelist.

How the whitelist works

1. Project owner request to have their github repo included in the whitelist
2. Bug hunters test the mobile or web application for vulnerabilities, opening tickets in the project’s repo
3. The bug hunters document these posts on the steemit frontend, after which they are rewarded by Utopian based on the bug severity level.

If you are new to Utopian and wondering 'What a task request is' – It is an announcement you make detailing what your project needs and how contributors can help you get it done.

---

Why you should open your projects to utopian bug hunters

_{source: Emily Mortar unsplash}

• Bigger audience means better service

Due to the scale of our bug hunting community, your software can be tested for bugs by multiple people in a tiny fraction of the time it would take to be noticed by contributors on github. Because the Utopian community is distributed across multiple time zones, you also benefit from access to a bug hunting community around the clock

• Tracking down errors outside your usual QA testing scope

While the QA is necessary towards establishing whether a project meets the set requirements, this process is mostly concerned with procedures and processes and no actual testing is conducted on the system. Although you may identify the defects in your project’s key features, bugs that are outside the scope of your QA testing are very likely to go undiscovered (and unfixed).

• Bugs will be discovered from the user’s perspective

As a developer or project owner, it is easy to view and use software from only a developer’s point of view, completely losing sight of how an end-user may use the features in the software. It's the user's system and regardless of what the developer or project owner may think is best, the system is not built for them but the users.

From security flaws that aren't easy to spot on the developer's console log to form fields that aren’t as user-friendly as they should be, you are presented a user’s view of your app’s weaknesses. Bug-hunters at Utopian use actual devices instead of emulators for real-world testing. Tests are conducted on various devices with every imaginable OS version and browser combination.

• Get good results with less preparation

If you are new to software development, it is most likely you’ll not have a QA team to prepare a detailed testing plan. So your software is deployed with just enough bugs to elect the mayor in a bug county. Our contributors will help police and identify major bugs, after which you can test and have them fixed before the next version release.

Call to action

If you are a developer or project owner, this post is directed at you. Connect with us today at our discord server, let's get those projects whitelisted. We'll help root out those annoying bugs before your users do. And if you have any questions, you can ask them below.