This past weekend the Rational Team Concert and Jazz Foundation teams got together for some serious bug knockdown on the 4.0 stream. To make things a little more interesting, the RTC and JF leadership team – myself, Adrian Cho, Kai-Uwe Maetzel, Philippe Mulet, and Scott Rich – offered to sponsor the “bug blitz” weekend with a charitable donation pledge.

We decided on Doctors without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), an international medical humanitarian organization working in nearly 70 countries to assist people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe.

We each pledged to donate $1 for each bug fixed, and $0.25 for bugs closed for any other reason, for all RTC and JF bugs closed between 5pm ET Friday and 9am ET Monday. Since there are five of us, this is a total of $5 for each bug fixed, and $1.25 for bugs closed for any other reason (invalid, dup, no longer a problem etc).

As of 9am this morning the final results are in… and either the RTC and JF teams are extremely supportive of Doctors without Borders, or they really really wanted to make the five of us pay up! We fixed 272 bugs, closed another 686, and Adrian, Kai, Philippe, Scott and I are out a total of $2217.50 to Doctors without Borders.  But what a great cause, and a great way to put some fun into bug fixing!

On behalf of the RTC and JF teams, thanks to everyone who pitched in to help triage, verify, and keep the teams fueled up with pizza and snacks. And thanks to all our customers, end users, and test teams for helping us nail those bugs!  We love to hear from you… so keep ’em coming!

Dave Thomson
Director, Rational Jazz ALM