Re: Quantity of open bugs

On 03/10/2011 02:25 PM, Kevin F. Quinn wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I was nosing through bugzilla, and noticed:
>
> * Number of open bugs is greater than 14,000
> * Number of open bugs untouched for more than 2 years - well over 2000.
> * Number of open bugs untouched between 1 and 2 years - well over 2000.
> * Number of open bugs untouched between 6 months and 1 year - well over
>    2000.
> * Number of open bugs untouched between 3 months and 6 months - over
>    2000
>
> The winner is bug #78406, which hasn't been touched for over 2240 days
> - over 6 years - at the time of writing.
>
> I would guess these old untouched bugs aren't actually going to be
> touched, ever - a lot simply won't be relevant any more for one reason
> or another.  All they're doing is cluttering up bugzilla.
I think Duncan has already covered the major points I was going to mention:
particularly with respect to the fact that we are all volunteers and thus
subject to resource constraints that other projects might not have.  I
realize that it is frustrating to a user to have a bug sit for a year (or
more) without ever being resolved (or even looked at), but there is really
only one way to resolve that: get someone who has the time and expertise to
step in and fill the gap.  Given that we can't exactly hold a gun to
people's heads and MAKE them work on Gentoo stuff (nor would I personally
be inclined to trust code produced using such methods), I really don't see
another alternative.

We closed a number of bugs related to SELinux recently; many of those bugs
had been open for quite some time and things had changed sufficiently that
we believed that the bug itself was no longer relevant, or we needed
feedback from the user and didn't get any.  Some of those bugs had been
open for a couple of years.  But we reviewed EACH of those bugs and made a
decision on a case-by-case basis.

I understand and appreciate the desire to close open bugs that are
cluttering up the bugzilla.  Not only do they create extra cruft for
everyone to wade through, they also make Gentoo look bad (my GOD, they've
got open bugs dating back to the founding of the Roman Empire!).  However,
I'm not convinced that blanket closing bugs that are over x days (weeks,
months, years) is the best (or even desirable) approach.

If a bug is related to a package that no longer exists, then it seems
pretty obvious that there is no need to keep the bug around.

If the bug is waiting on feedback from a user, and that user hasn't
provided the requested feedback in, say, 60 days (after a bump to the bug)
then I'd say that the bug is arguably no longer of importance to the user,
or at least the email address we have on file for that user doesn't work
any more.

Beyond those two conditions, I'd really be loathe to close anything without
good evidence to indicate that it either is no longer relevant, or it can't
be fixed.

Just my $0.02 (not adjusted for currency devaluation)

Later,
Gizmo