Re: Neal Stephenson uses debian
Joey Hess wrote:
> http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning_print.html
>
> "I use a distribution called Debian"
> "what really sold me on it was its phenomenal bug database"
> -- Neal Stephenson
>
> If you have read Neal Stephenson's books, this probably makes you quite happy.
> If you haven't read his books, I suggest you start with _Snow_Crash_. :-)
Further down in the article I read:
When had a problem with Debian in early January of 1997, I sent in a
message describing the problem to submit@bugs.debian.org. My problem was
promptly assigned a bug report number (#6518) and a severity level (the
available choices being critical, grave, important, normal, fixed, and
wishlist) and forwarded to mailing lists where Debian people hang out.
Within twenty-four hours I had received five e-mails telling me how to
fix the problem: two from North America, two from Europe, and one from
Australia. All of these e-mails gave me the same suggestion, which
worked, and made my problem go away. But at the same time, a transcript
of this exchange was posted to Debian's bug database, so that if other
users had the same problem later, they would be able to search through
and find the solution without having to enter a new, redundant bug
report.
Unfortunatly, Neal is wrong. Bug #6518 was closed and so it expired from our
database. The bug describing the fix to whatever problem he ran into is
gone, users cannot use the bug tracking system to find it. I'm annoyed on 2
levels, first and I'm a big fan of Neal's and I wanted to see this famous
bug for myself. Second, and more importantly, I think Neal has a valid point
that there is value in keeping old bugs indefintely.
In bug #9705, Klee suggests archiving old bug reports to a seperate
directory rathger than removing them completly. It seems like a good idea,
how hard can it be to implment?
--
see shy jo
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