Re: Debian does not have customers
On Wed, Sep 21, 2016 at 12:50:41PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
>...
> But still, despite all of those caveats, I do think there are a few things
> that are fairly clear-cut. If the package has 3,000 open bugs, just close
> out the unactionable reports in some polite and constructive way. At that
> point, there are so many actionable bugs ahead in the queue that those
> reports are adding clutter and making it harder for people to get a handle
> on the bugs that can be directly addressed by the package maintainers.
>...
How do you define "unactionable reports" and "constructive way"?
A submitter who reported an occasional segfault in wheezy GNOME
3 years ago might answer that he still sees it in jessie today.
What action to you expect from the package maintainers to directly
address this bug after that answer?
The real problem is not the clutter among old bugs - when noone
is able, available and willing to fix them it makes exactly zero
difference whether there are 30 or 3000 open bugs.
The real problem is that with current resources it is not even
possible to handle all new bugs in some packages.
But what you describe is based on the (often unrealistic) assumption
that the package maintainers are able to handle all new bugs and are
additionallt even able to handle some of the old bugs.
If you want to be honest, you have to tell users that they shouldn't
waste their time on reporting bugs against the ancient versions of
such packages in stable.
It is not likely that anyone will ever look at these bugs - they are
clutter from the moment they are being reported.
cu
Adrian
--
"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed
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