On Sat, Feb 03, 2001 at 07:45:00PM -0600, Chris Lawrence wrote:
> I just saw something like this in a control file:
>
> XXX has its own BTS at http://XXX/. If you find an upstream problem
> (not packaging problem!!), please use it instead of Debian BTS.
>
> I've been seeing a few of these in packages lately (sometimes in
> README.Debian). However, it seems like maintainers should be the
> front line of support for Debian users, regardless of whether it's an
> "upstream" or packaging problem. I guess if it's entirely obvious
> it's an upstream problem, and the end user knows how to properly
> report the problem, it may not be an issue (indeed, I directly
> reported a wishlist item in Konqueror today to the KDE folks, though I
> probably wouldn't have if I had to go to a lot more hassle than typing
> 'reportbug -b kde konqueror'). But unless the current Debian package
> is in sync with upstream (which it usually won't be in stable) I can
> see a lot of already-fixed-in-their-version bugs getting dumped on
> upstream developers.
>
> Anyway, I was wondering if this is something we want to discourage in
> policy, or if I'm just not thinking the same way as most maintainers
> (i.e. my premises are flawed).
Well, speaking as an upstream author, "downstream bugs", so to speak,
are quite annoying, in that significant effort has to be expended to
track and fix and close them in a dozen different bug tracking
systems. It would be significantly more conventient for upstream
authors to hear about bugs through their own BTS. I don't think we
would even mind getting some old bugs.
sam th
sam@uchicago.edu
http://www.abisource.com/~sam/
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