Old bug reports

[bmbuck@acsu.buffalo.edu]

I was looking at Ian Jackson's automated report of unanswered bugs, and 
the number of -very- old bugs is surprising.  Closer examination of the 
oldest ones makes me think that the problem isn't so much the bugs but 
bad handling.

Of the 5 oldest bugs, 4 are on xbase, and might refer to problems 
specific to XFree86 3.1.2, which is no longer current.  Someone ought 
to verify that the bugs still exist (bugs 725, 740, 773, and 775).  Two 
relate to twm, and one of those (725, the -oldest- unanswered bug) is 
described by Ian Jackson as being in every version of twm he's ever 
used, so it sounds to me like an upstream bug.  Maybe its been fixed in 
the last 2 years.  If not, it can probably be forwarded upstream.  Bug 
740 deals with a server problem.  If it isn't fixed by now, it to 
should probably be forwarded upstream.

The 5th eldest bug was one of several reported on the various versions 
of "echo" in the system.  Several bugs were originally filed, one for 
each built-in echo, and one for /bin/echo.  Only the bug for tcsh's 
echo remains, the rest presumably having been forwarded upstream.  The 
bug report messages for this bug indicate that it, too, should be 
forwarded upstream (the tcsh maintained disclaims responsibility for 
the bug), but it apparantly hand't been done properly.

This is just the 5 oldest.  I've heard tell recently that we have over 
2200 outstanding bugs.  That's 20% of the total bugs received.  Can we 
at least examine these older bugs and clear them out?  Since we have 
apparantly received over 7000 bug reports in the last year, I can 
understand the large number of open bugs, but the age of the eldest 
could be embarassing.  (Some, like bug 988, do have entries that say 
"this bug is basically unsoluble right now, but the open bug serves a 
useful reminder of the problem for when it is soluble".  This I can see 
as legitimate when deserved.  The problem I see is when it looks like 
we've forgotten or ignored a bug.)

-- 
     Buddha Buck                      bmbuck@acsu.buffalo.edu
"Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our
liberty depends upon the chaos and cacaphony of the unfettered speech
the First Amendment protects."  -- A.L.A. v. U.S. Dept. of Justice


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