General bug policy
I propose the following rules for dealing with disputes over bug
reports:
1. In the first instance a package maintainer may decide whethere a
bug report not justified and close it if they feel it isn't.
2. If the submitter (or anyone else) disagrees they should try to
resolve it by email with the maintainer and/or by discussion on this
list. During this period the submitter may choose to reopen the bug
(and mark it unforwarded if necessary) and reassign it to
`debian-policy'.
3. If this discussion reaches an impasse the technical committee
(shortly to be formed) will have to decide on the problem. When it is
clear that this has happened the submitter or maintainer should ensure
that the bug is open and unforwarded and reassign it to `tech-ctte'
(which will be the name of the Technical Committee mailing list).
4. Noone but the maintainer of a package (or someone acting on their
request) should close its bug reports.
I also propose the following guidelines for determining whether a bug
report should be kept open, etc. These may be stated elsewhere
already, but should be consolidated:
1. Bug reports represent defects in the software that should be
remedied. Wishlist items represent misfeatures or extra
functionality, or any other area where a change would be useful or
good.
2. A bug is still a bug if the upstream authors are aware of it - even
if the upstream authors disagree that it is a bug. Bugs of which the
upstream authors have been made aware (whether they disagreed with the
report or not) can be marked `forwarded' but should not be closed.
The package maintainer need not mark such a bug as forwarded - for
example, they may intend to fix it themselves.
2a. However, all reports of bugs which are bugs in the upstream
version of the package should be forwarded upstream, possibly
sanitised or with patches, but in any case without delay.
3. A bug is still a bug if it has been assigned to the wrong package
or the way to fix it is unclear or there are other problems with the
report in question. Reports of such `difficult' bugs should not be
closed. If there is doubt about the correct assignment of a report it
should be assigned to `debian-policy' and discussed there.
4. Change requests for changes which would not be useful or good
should not be left as open wishlist items. See above for details of
what to do in case of dispute.
Ian.
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