Re: Consensus on closing old bugs

[Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org>]

>>>>> "Tomas" == Tomas Pospisek <tpo2@sourcepole.ch> writes:

    Tomas> All that said, I have never received negative feedback to
    Tomas> these bug triages that I am occassionaly doing and am under
    Tomas> the impression that the maintainers *do* appreciate someone
    Tomas> going over their packages bugs from time to time and closing
    Tomas> bugs that to the best of one's judgement will not be taken
    Tomas> care of any more.

Yes, and I certainly value this kind of triage both as a reporter and a
maintainer.

I think agreeing with  both Tomas and Santiago, for me a big factor is
the state of the bug.
If a bug is waiting for a maintainer, let the maintainer deal with it.
Most of us do not prefer to close bugs simply because they are old.
But closing bugs with a moreinfo tag when information has not been
provided in six months to a year is likely fine.
So is asking for more info and adding a moreinfo tag when appropriate.

It's even appropriate to ask if the bug still happens.  If you have
reason to believe it doesn't it is often appropriate to add a moreinfo
tag in that situation.
And then, on the next pass around if there has been no reply closing it.

I think a significant fraction of maintainers frown on the idea of
asking if a bug still happens simply because there's a new version and
closing on no reply.  The difference being whether you have reason to
believe the bug might be fixed.  I think Ubuntu assumes it probably was
and a lot of Debian tends to assume it probably was not.
But again, maintainers have a fair bit of flexibility, and the more
lightly maintained/closer to salvaging a package is, the more it's
appropriate for people doing QA work to get in and apply their own
judgment.