Last Summer, as I was working on the Tiki project, which uses Twitter's Bootstrap framework a lot, I realized that Bootstrap is quite hard to discover organically and I decided to bite the bullet and go through Bootstrap's documentation.

The OK

Doing so, I hit quite a few issues, some of which I reported:

• #23754 Columns sound no good
• #23769 "Large select" example vertically overflows in Forms component documentation
• #23772 Blockquotes example and others use cryptic spacing classes before their introduction
• #23773 Documentation: Clicking link to (anchor) "browser defaults" does not work (no effect)

From these 4 initial reports, 2 were reportedly solved and closed. #23754 was a wide report which could be considered as reporting several problems. Several of these were fixed, and when the ticket was closed, I opened more specific/clear reports, #24705 Grid system documentation refers to undefined columns and #24706 Inappropriate paragraph in grid system documentation's "How it works" section ("Sounds good?"). As I could not verify the fix for #23769, I filed #24288 Indicate getbootstrap.com website freshness (documentation version). The only worrying case was #23772, which was closed without solution nor explanation, and which remains closed as of ½ year later. Since I couldn't reopen it myself, and since no one saw my request to reopen it, I filed a new ticket, #25225 Blockquotes example and others use cryptic spacing classes before their introduction.

The Bad

At that point, I had 4 new issue reports : #24705, #24706, #24288 and #25225. All of these were closed. Worryingly though, only #24706 was actually solved. The 3 other issues still persist, to my knowledge. Even though I asked to reopen 2 of them months ago, the 3 remain closed.

That's when I figured it was time to ask the mailing list whether Bootstrap contributors can expect serious treatment. And that's when things got ugly.

The Ugly

The next problem I hit was I could not find any official mailing list about Bootstrap development. When I realized Bootstrap's documentation did not refer to any discussion forum, I had to give up, and instead reported #25824 Documentation does not refer to discussion forums.

I suggest anyone who would consider contributing to or using Bootstrap to read that last report. The report was locked in less than a month, without any result being mentioned­. Not only did Bootstrap not get any official forum, but the documentation still fails to acknowledge that there is none.

Given the level of interest the Bootstrap project seems to have in getting forward, I am afraid the most helpful thing I can do is to stop wasting my time on it. This resignation shall be my last contribution to Bootstrap.

2025 Update

As Tiki still uses Bootstrap, I still use Bootstrap on this website. This caused a regression when I upgraded to Tiki 27, even though the bug has been―improperly―reported to Bootstrap for more than 2 years. I admit I had forgotten about my resignation, so I tried advising in that ticket, which failed. Trying to report that also failed. Although I have never been warned about that, my best hypothesis is that someone from Bootstrap thought that locking was not sufficient, but that my account also needed to be blocked. Without a notice, nor even ensuring that their ITS actually supported blocking people. Which means I cannot even report that ITS bug to Bootstrap. Are the ITS engine developers aware of that bug? Who knows―Bootstrap is still using GitHub, which has no (public) issue tracker.
Bravo, Mark Otto, BRA-VO Bootstrap. You are proving worthy of your founder👏

There is reason for hope, though. Bootstrap did get its official forum, as "soon" as 8 years after its announcement. At that pace, who knows that it won't soon have a proper forum and a proper ITS? Could Bootstrap even turn into a recommendable product so fast it ends up beating Flexbox at becoming a W3C Recommendation?😆