Re: Quantity of open bugs [LWN.net]

From:		Thomas Kahle <tomka-AT-gentoo.org>
To:		gentoo-dev-AT-lists.gentoo.org
Subject:		Re: Quantity of open bugs
Date:		Fri, 11 Mar 2011 15:13:38 +0100

On 20:25 Thu 10 Mar     , 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.
> 
> 
> So I'd like to suggest a drastic, perhaps controversial action.  Mark
> all bugs that haven't been touched for over (say) 3 months as
> "Resolved:Wontfix", with a polite comment saying that it is closed due
> to lack of resource amongst the volunteer developer community. 

I do come back to bugs after years.  They should not be closed if they
are not fixed.  "WONTFIX" for me means that there was a decision made
that this will not be fixed, but that is not the case.

+1 for the argument that 14000 open bugs is not a problem.  Bugzilla is
not something that needs to be clean and tidy.  Closing them would
generate a lot of work because of false positive while there is zero
benefit.

Cheers, 
Thomas

> sure a suitable bugzilla script wiz could do that relatively easily.
> Users who care about such bugs can still comment on them, or talk
> directly to the assigned dev to highlight it's still a relevant issue
> to them, or even to supply a solution against the current tree.
> 
> It could be an ongoing policy, in which case, users who care about
> them can keep bugs alive simply by posting useful updates to the bug,
> describing how the issue still applies to a new revision for example.
> 
> Just a thought from an old ex-dev...
> 
> Kev.
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Thomas Kahle
http://dev.gentoo.org/~tomka/

to post comments

(off-topic) Automatic replies

Posted Mar 20, 2011 16:52 UTC (Sun) by magnus (subscriber, #34778) [Link] (1 responses)

I really find the kind of boilerplate "polite" comments that some bug trackers use (Ubuntu springs to mind) as passive aggressive and condescending. I would much rather have an honest, straightforward text explaining that since the software is given away for free and is maintained by a limited set of people, all bugs can not be looked into.

Emotional words like "sorry" and "thank you" should not be used for auto-generated text in my personal opinion, maybe it's just me that is old fashioned...

(off-topic) Automatic replies

Posted Mar 23, 2011 2:04 UTC (Wed) by blujay (guest, #39961) [Link]

I completely agree with you. I feel patronized when I report a bug to Ubuntu and six months later a Launchpad wonk says, "Thank you for helping Ubuntu by reporting this bug. Please test the latest version of the software and let us know if the bug still exists," and marks the bug as NEEDSINFO, so no one will look at it again until I respond! If the first-responder isn't willing to even check the changelog of the package to see if the bug was fixed, he shouldn't mark the bug as NEEDSINFO! It should usually be assumed that the bug still exists unless it's explicitly marked as fixed by upstream. I shouldn't have to test a development version or upgrade my whole system from an LTS just to see if a bug was fixed in a later version, when no apparent effort was made to fix the bug in the first place!

Debian handles bug reports much better.