Raising the bar: Now there is no lawn

Recently I found an issue in augeas that I fixed, so I wanted to be a good netizen and report the problem along with the patch.

I've never needed to contribute to a Fedora Hosted project before, so I do not possess a Fedora Account, which is required for their bug reporting system.

OK, no big deal, their account signup is not too onerous: email, name, password, security Q&A and a math capcha....  A dozen tries later, I finally abandon the idea that I would ever get past the image capcha.  The validator must be using the new math, because last time I checked 22+53=75.

They have an audio capcha option, too, let's try that....  I'm guessing it's using the Ogg Vorbis codec, because I couldn't get it to play.

Alright, let's try asking on the IRC channel if the account system is having problems....  Except it's been so long since I've used freenode that I have no idea what my password might have been, so I can't join any channel to ask.

Mailing list! There's a developer mailing list!  I'll just drop them a quick note with the patch.

You are not allowed to post to this mailing list, and your message has been automatically rejected.  If you think that your messages are being rejected in error, contact the mailing list owner.

I really don't feel like joining the list just to post a single patch, because the chances that I'll ever find a bug worth reporting again are pretty slim.

By this point, I've already spent more time just trying to report the bug and the fix than it took to find and fix the bug in the first place.

UNCLE!

Finally I looked through the mailing list and just dropped a message with the patch to one of the maintainers, and he committed the fix -- thanks David!

Once upon a time, the Internet used to be an open and collaborative environment, but these days, it's just wall after wall to keep the pests off the lawn.