Re: On maintainers not responding to bugs

[Eduard Bloch <edi@gmx.de>]

#include <hallo.h>
* Don Armstrong [Mon, Feb 26 2007, 01:55:42PM]:
> On Mon, 26 Feb 2007, Andreas Tille wrote:
> > A maintainer who refuses to respond to a reasonable bug report of a
> > user does not deserve any user.
> 
> It's not a case of maintainers refusing to respond, it's a case of
> some maintainers of some packagages drowning in bugs and not being
> able to respond to all of them. [I don't believe any maintainer of
> packages, given enough hours in the day, would fail to respond to
> reasonable bug reports.]

Or they do not respond in time and forget about those bug reports even
later when they have time. Closing the eyes is soo easy.

> I'm open to suggestions of real solutions to this problem, (indeed, I
> continue to suggest that interested people jump in and help out) but
> technical hurdles for maintainers to overcome and waste their limited
> time in trivialities are pointless, and not something I'm willing to
> support.

And how do you help a maintainer that does not admit that he needs help?

I would support a semi-automated solution: BTS tracks an "eta2fix" value
which maintainer can set telling the planed schedule for fixing this bug
in the near future. Not setting ETAs indicates that the maintainer is
MIA/lazy/ignorant. Missing the own ETAs may indicate that maintainer
needs help and this can be make public automaticaly in a common place.

I think this solution should quickly unveil those ignorant "kings of my
package" and help people find the best place where they can help.

And please don't tell me this is a technical curdle since this would be
crap. Every time you use a keyboard instead of speaking freely you have
to jump over hurdles.

Eduard.

-- 
<LGS> Halloechen, ihr Spinner, so frueh auf?
<nusse> nein, wir schlafen alle im kollektiv
<knorke> mein alkoven ist kaputt
<teq> alkohol kaputt?