Re: Closing bugs such as 210560
On Wed, Oct 22, 2003 at 08:36:11PM -0500, Billy Biggs wrote:
> Matt Zimmerman (mdz@debian.org):
>
> > "...submitting upstream bugs to Debian BTS only slows down the
> > packaging work by requiring the maintainer to act as a go between on
> > the bug."
> >
> > Of course, it wastes a great deal more of upstream's time if the
> > report ends up being specific to the Debian packaged version of the
> > software, or only manifests itself on Debian systems (in the common
> > case where upstream does not use Debian).
>
> I believe that most upstream developers want their software to work
> well with as few distribution specific patches as possible. It improves
> the user experience and the ability to fix bugs. Bug reports will come
> from Debian users because they either don't know about or don't trust
> Debian's own bug system (and who can blame them with stuff like this).
The question isn't whether non-Debian-specific bugs should be forwarded
upstream (they absolutely should); the question is whether they should go to
the Debian maintainer _first_ so that they can be screened and to ensure
they are filed upstream in the proper way.
For users who don't know how to report bugs properly, it helps if the
maintainer knows how to forward bugs back to Debian if he suspects they are
not his.
--
- mdz
Reply to: