Small comments thru the text, rant follows.
Jon Stanley wrote:
Hear ye, hear ye! At the BugZappers meeting that occurred today,
March 12, 2008, two proposals for dealing with the backlog of bugs,
both now and in the future, were discussed. It was also discussed
that this would be another useful forum to solicit feedback from. Our
goal here is not to disenfranchise bug reporters or cause them more
work. Instead, it is designed to introduce predictability into the
lifecycle of a bug. This is part of the relaunch of the BugZappers
initiative, which I had announced yesterday. It's important to note,
that while you're just now starting to see stuff from us visibly, this
has been several months in the making and thought through very
thoroughly.
These proposals will be presented at the meeting of the Fedora
Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo) tomorrow, with a vote to be
rendered on 2008-03-20 if necessary, and execution to begin shortly
thereafter. Please feel free to make comments by replying to this
e-mail or editing the wiki. We also hang out in #fedora-qa on
freenode (my nick is jds2001), and our mailing list is
fedora-test-list@xxxxxxxxxx for other ways to make contact with us.
The purpose of the meeting today was to solicit input on proposals for
dealing with the current unmanageable backlog of bugs. In the long
term, this backlog will cause Fedora irreparable harm, if it has not
already. Our most valuable asset, the bug reporter, is feeling left
out in the cold. Community triagers feel discouraged by what they see
as a insurmountable task, thereby making the problem feed on itself.
We have to act, and the time to do it is now.
I agree that the backlog of unsolved bugs is seriously hurting user
perceptions.
To that end, I am proud to present two proposals, One has to do with
dealing with the backlog that we have now, and the other has to do
with making sure we never get into this situation again -- ever. We
believe that these proposals are the right thing to do, and now is the
right time to do them, right before a release.
I would suggest that the time to fix them is now, *instead* of a
release. To clear the backlog by *fixing* the bugs, not by writing
clever scripts to mark them CLOSED:WONTFIX or send notes to bug
submitters to update the version to keep the bug open (unfixed) for
another two releases.
I'd also like to give credit where it's due for these proposals. The
primary author of both of them is John Poelstra, without whom many of
the things that have been accomplished to date would not have been. In
just a few short months, we've gone from having almost nothing
formalized to having a formal bug workflow, and having formal plans of
dealing with the backlog, both now and in the future.
It's important to note that these are PROPOSALS at the current time,
and have not been approved in any way. I am expecting, and welcome,
impassioned debate on these proposals. In the course of these debates,
however, lets be civil with one another - we're allresponsible adults
here. If you have comments or concerns about either of the proposals,
there's a comments section at the bottom of both of them on the wiki,
which I encourage you to use. Also, please come to the meeting and/or
reply to this e-mail if you have comments. Please try to back up
changes to the proposals with a specific example of where the proposed
action is wrong/bad/whatever, and what could be done differently to
alleviate the concern.
Also note that the framework of the proposals is there. The exact text
to be found in bugs is still yet to be written, however that will be
written in the next week or so. I realize that both this introduction
and the proposals themselves are extremely long, but please read them!
The wiki versions of these proposals can be found at:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/JohnPoelstra/BugzillaExtremeMakeOver
I read them, and I find lots of ways to make unfixed bugs exit bugzilla,
but no indication that bugs will actually be fixed in a more timely fashion.
I think you need a "deadline scheduler" approach, if a bug in a package
isn't fixed by some (reasonable) time after it's reported, it should be
evaluated, and unless it's waiting on external info it should be marked
as TRIVIAL, AVOIDABLE, or RECOVERABLE (all FIXLATER), or mark the
package as UNMAINTAINED. Then release the UNMAINTAINED packages as a
separate group in the next release, the way "extras" used to be.
I believe that maintainers would be motivated to avoid having their
packages marked UNMAINTAINED, and if they aren't, the description is
accurate. You would hate to drop a package, but having one with serious
bugs is worse. You can define "serious" any way you want, users know
"doesn't work" when they report it.
In other words, if the package is still usable by most users, document
the bug as trivial and live with it, and if a major bug isn't fixed, the
reason doesn't matter. Developers enjoy adding new features more than
bug fixing, or become too busy to maintain. Good intentions are nice,
but they don't buy you a beer.
--
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@xxxxxxx>
"We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked." - from Slashdot
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