Re: (seemingly) declinging bug report numbers
On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 12:40 AM, Christian PERRIER <bubulle@debian.org> wrote:
>
> For sure, this kind of "decline" is not that visible. We still have
> new contributors, we still manage to do releases, we still have an
> ever growing number of packages. But, we have less bug reports. We have
> partly abandoned packages, including in the "core" of the
> distribution. We have an installer that has just been "rescued" by
> nearly a "one-man" effort. And I probably forget many other examples.
>
> This is sometimes hidden by the incredible work and investment of
> several people in the project (yes, that's probably mean whoever is
> reading this).
>
> But, still, yes, I feel we are in danger in some way. That may sound alarming
> (death of Debian predicted, film at 11), but, really, getting new
> blood is important for us....if we don't want to shrink into a club of
> old chaps who are doing Debian "just for their needs" but can't manage
> to do it anymore because there is too much to do..:-).
>
A thread like this really makes me feel bad personally. I am no real
programmer, but I am a power user for sure, and on my way to being a
sysadmin. But I basically never report bugs. I have used Sid for
years, and in fact I often don't notice bugs in my personal workflow
(maybe if I can think of myself as a user? I notice end-user-impacting
bugs in other areas). If someone comes over and sees me working the
might say, "wow that is an annoying bug" and I say "what bug? Oh that.
I didn't notice, I just worked around it." Even with bugs I do notice,
I usually just ignore and work around until it is fixed. I guess it is
a combo of never having gotten comfortable with the bug report
workflow and never feeling like I could go deep enough into debugging
to be very useful (I have gotten useful info out of gdb maybe twice
over the years). Now I am just in a habit of not doing it.
Kelly Clowers
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