Re: interpretation of wontfix

[Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com>]

On March 29, 2018 1:16:31 PM UTC, Ian Campbell <ijc@debian.org> wrote:
>On Thu, 2018-03-29 at 14:02 +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
>> Don Armstrong writes ("Re: interpretation of wontfix"):
>> > 2) wontfix+help: this bug requires too much effort to fix, so I
>won't be
>> >    working on it, but patches will be accepted.
>> 
>> I dislike the use of "help" in this context.  If the maintainers
>think
>> the bug is not worth their *own* time, it seems perverse for the
>> maintainers to set a tag which suggests to other contributors that
>> they should spend *their* time on it.
>
>The case which caused this thread was[0] "maintainer does not have the
>time/inclination to investigate/fix bugs on this non-release
>architecture", the implication being that "the porters of that arch
>should deal with this bug and provide a patch which the maintainer will
>evaluate".
>
>To that end perhaps this is a special enough case of "help" that a
>specific "porter" tag is warranted? (or perhaps a set of "porter-ARCH"
>tags or a combination of "porter" and "ARCH" tags, or whatever). In
>fact I don't see why we would limit it to non-release arches, it seems
>useful for release arches too.
>
>Or perhaps this just needs a consensus on the appropriate use of some
>`port@debian.org` usertags?
>
>Ian.
>
>[0] approximately and appologies if I've grossly mischaracterized this.

Personally, I find the "I don't think it's worth the effort, but if you think it is, I'll accept a patch" case to be reasonably common.

I don't think it's about power.  I think it's about different priorities and perspectives.

Scott K