Bug#543815: Establishing a "Severity" rating

[Stephen Dowdy <sdowdy@ucar.edu>]

RE:
[ Severity set to 'important' from 'critical' Request was from maximilian attems <maks@debian.org> ]

I just wanted to point out that i had difficulty determining HOW to address
the severity field in reportbug.

Because i *do* have a workaround to the "problem", it's not critical to *me*
anymore, and wasn't at the point i submitted the bug.

But the question that debian reportbug asks is:

--------------------------------

How would you rate the severity of this problem or report?

1 critical        makes unrelated software on the system (or the whole system) break, or causes serious data loss, or introduces a security hole on systems where
                  you install the package.
2 grave           makes the package in question unusable by most or all users, or causes data loss, or introduces a security hole allowing access to the accounts
                  of users who use the package.
3 serious         is a severe violation of Debian policy (that is, the problem is a violation of a 'must' or 'required' directive); may or may not affect the
                  usability of the package. Note that non-severe policy violations may be 'normal,' 'minor,' or 'wishlist' bugs. (Package maintainers may also
                  designate other bugs as 'serious' and thus release-critical; however, end users should not do so.)
4 important       a bug which has a major effect on the usability of a package, without rendering it completely unusable to everyone.
...

Please select a severity level: [normal]

--------------------------------

in a generic sense, this *problem* is critical, because it
DOES render end-user systems broken.  "...makes...(or the whole system) break..."
(not being able to boot due to kernel panic certainly falls under "system breakage")
So, given the language from reportbug, i answered honestly that this
bug does indeed break the whole system, therefore it is a critical problem.

my *specific* problem *report* itself is not critical, because i am
operational now that i've determined the nature of the problem.
(if i were under a security compliance obligation and was still
incapable of booting my system due to this bug, i would consider
this problem VERY critical)

So, in this reply, i am simply voicing my concern that a better
wording in reportbug addressing this type of discrepency be employed.

Perhaps a distinction between end-user "urgency" and problem "severity"
is needed.

It's certainly not my intent to distract developers from more
important tasks (i can tell from other bug reports i'm not the only
one affected by this, but i don't believe the affected end-user
base is very large)  I only bring this up, because i've also seen
other users wonder about how to classify bug report severity as well.

thanks,
--stephen