Re: [gentoo-user] Number of open Bugzilla bugs (Was: Question about gentoo-sources kernel release versions)

[Jack]

[top posting just because ...  and clearly personal opinion]
I file and deal with bugs on both bugs.gentoo.org and bugs.kde.orf, and  
one thing I can say with conviction is that the response to a bug  
varies greatly, and seems to depend on who receives it, possibly being  
per application, per project, per team, or sometimes per individual,  
but which one matters.  Unfortunately, it's not much use to generalize  
about how bugs are handled (or not handled) since there really is such  
a variation.  Even within one application, I've seen some bugs handled  
almost immediately, and others sit for years.

Jack

On 2020.02.09 19:23, Michael Jones wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 9, 2020 at 5:43 PM Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote:
>
> > Bugs get closed all the time.  Bugs also get opened and and linger
> all
> > the time.  I couldn't tell you the ratio, but that is the nature of
> > things.
> >
> > If you don't report an issue, and nobody else is aware of it, I can
> > pretty much guarantee that nobody will fix it.  If you do report an
> > issue it might or might not get fixed.  That's the nature of the
> > beast.
>
>
> Or in my case, I sometimes post 1-line pull requests to the Gentoo
> github,
> which fix packages being unable to compile, which get rejected
> because I
> didn't jump through enough hoops, and the bug remains unfixed for
> over a
> year after I open the PR. I stopped posting PRs after that, since
> it's a
> waste of my time.
>
> Or I post patches to Bugzilla for some package, the Gentoo maintainer
> agrees to accept them after Upstream reviews it, and upstream takes 3
> years
> to review, with dead mailing list during that 3 year period.
>
> On the flip side, I regularly see issues get fixed between when I
> notice
> the issue, and the issue is reported (by myself in many cases) on
> Bugzilla.
>
> I'm not attempting to be contradictory for the sake of being
> contradictory,
> but the situation is significantly more complicated than what you
> said, but
> English is imprecise, so I understand that you're aware of these
> things.
>
> Filing bugs, or patches, or PRs, or instructions for fixing, or even
> attempting to get fixes into the appropriate upstream project,
> regularly
> results in no outcome for me at all. Neither positive or negative.
> Just
> nothing.
>
> Add to that, Gentoo has *so many bugs* that your bug tracking
> software,
> when told to simply "Give me all of the bugs" refuses to actually do
> so.
>
> Why should I continue opening new bugs, (or even better, provide
> patches)
> when I have new problems?
>
> I don't see the problem as Gentoo not knowing that there are issues
> that
> should be tracked. I see it as a problem of Gentoo can't engage with
> it's
> user community in an effective way. And I see having over 10,000 open
> bugs
> as one of the barriers between effective user engagement and what we
> have
> today.
>
>
> > Honestly, I'm not sure how having bots beg bug reporters about
> letting
> > their bugs be closed relentlessly (albeit at a very slow rate) until
> > they finally stop responding is going to improve things.  Somebody
> > reports an issue and is frustrated that nobody does anything about
> it.
> >
>
> Is there ever a time cutoff, after which a bug should automatically be
> closed, in your opinion?
>
> I thought my proposal of a single reminder email after 5 years, and
> then
> auto-close after 10 years, was reasonable.
>
> Is 10 years for the reminder email, and 20 for the auto-close better?
>
> Surely if something hasn't been addressed in 20 years, it won't be?
>
>
> > Will reminding them that we didn't do anything about it in 5-10
> years
> > improve how they feel about the issue?  If they reply that it still
> is
> > an issue, will it help that we reply again in another 5 years to ask
> > if it is still an issue help?
>
>
> Yes, it will improve how I feel about it.
>
> Either:
> 1. The bug hasn't been acted on in the previous 5 years on bugzilla,
> but
> maybe it's been fixed and the original reporter / developer forgot to
> do
> anything in bugzilla about it. Or no one realized it was fixed. This
> kind
> of thing happens all the time.
> 2. The maintainer of the package in question failed to address the
> problem,
> even to acknowledge the problems existence, in the preceding 5 years.
> Maybe
> it fell through the cracks? Maybe it's being deliberately ignored?
> Computers can do things for us automatically, like remind people about
> things.
>
>
> > It seems like picking at a scab when the only people paying
> attention to a
> > bug are the reporter and a bot.
> >
>
> A scab that's failed to heal in 5 years is a pretty serious injury.
>
>
> > My gut feeling is that this sort of thing will make people even less
> > likely to report new bugs they find, because they're constantly
> being
> > reminded of ancient situations where this turned out to be a waste
> of
> > time.  If they weren't reminded of this they'd be more likely to
> > report an issue, and that might or might not be a waste of time.
> >
>
> So stop making it a waste of people's time?
>
> You're reaction to this suggestion gives me the impression that
> Gentoo, as
> a project, considers it to be just fine for issues to be completely
> untouched for a decade, no acknowledgment, no action.
>
> Do you think that's fine? Or not? I just want to make sure I fully
> understand your point of view.
>
> Personally, I don't. But I'm not a Gentoo developer, so *shrug*.
>
> Obviously everybody would prefer that all bugs get fixed promptly.
> > Short of that, I'm not sure that automatically closing the bugs is
> an
> > improvement on what currently happens.  But, it probably wouldn't
> > personally offend me if old bugs were closed.  It just means that if
> > somebody does pick up that package and starts maintaining it again
> and
> > are cleaning things up, they might not fix some lingering issue that
> > they aren't aware of with it.
> >
> > --
> > Rich
> >
> >
>