There is a group of brave volunteers at the Symbian Foundation which have the ambition of finding and removing any bug left in the platform code. A rather tricky job though, since as we all know, there are no bugs in Symbian

OK, I’m jocking. Of course there are bugs in the software, but there are few of them after each meeting of the Bug Squad.

We see reports of such bugs every now and then, and here at Forum Nokia we have a dedicated feedback channel through which we invite you to send us you bug reports. But now that the operating system source code is fully open, there is an even better way of facing this pest: direct combat. And you can do your part too.

The Squad is a virtual one. No formal application is required, no qualifications check. You can join it by simply adding your name to a table in the wiki, and by introducing yourself on the IRC channel. You don’t even have to be a developer in order to participate, testers are welcome too – be they professionals or mere passionate power-users. Working in virtual teams, and focusing on one package/component/application at the time, each volunteer can contribute by identifying a bug, suggesting a better way of implementing a feature, or actually fixing and then verifying the identified bug.

Serious work, but fun too. Reporting a bug gains you a “gold coin“, fixing it will bring you three such tokens. And if you get to collect 81 gold coins, you will gain the “back gecko” title, and community’s respect. Sounds like a fun game to play right?

So, what do you say? Will you join the squad? The next test day is scheduled for 24.05.2010 and it is focusing on the Organizer package, you can find the action plan for this day here.

A rather close call to action but don’t worry if you cannot join them now, you can stay up to date with upcoming events and the progress done by the team by visiting their wiki page at http://tiny.symbian.org/bugsquad and thus be ready for the next rounds.