For the record, I am referencing http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/BugStatusWorkFlow#CLOSED Currently, the official bug lifecycle includes the following phrase: "The resolution UPSTREAM can be used by maintainers to denote a bug that they expect to be fixed by upstream development and naturally rolled back into Fedora as part of the update process. Ideally, a comment should be added with a link to the upstream bug report." I've seen quite a few bugs lately closed with this resolution (mostly in the Evolution and GNOME projects for me personally). It seems to me that this is terribly useless in terms of informing users when their bugs are fixed. Essentially, when closing this bug as UPSTREAM, we are communicating to our users "This will get fixed. Probably. And it will get pulled into Fedora eventually. Probably." Most people, when they can actually be convinced to file a real bug report (even through ABRT), are doing so because they have an issue with the software and want to know when it's fixed. Closing things upstream requires that the reporters (who already likely had to be coaxed to file a bug in the first place) now also have to manually choose to go and create an account on an unrelated bug tracker if they want to follow along on the resolution of the issue. Furthermore, it makes it very difficult for the developer working on the problem to communicate with the original reporter. I feel that it really should be the responsibility of the package maintainer to keep tickets open in Fedora until upstream produces a release that fixes them. This way, the maintainer at least can act to coordinate requests for additional information to and from upstream. So I propose that we should remove the above language from the BugStatusWorkFlow page and eliminate the UPSTREAM resolution from our vocabulary. Yes, it's results in marginally more work for the package maintainer, but I think that it's a worthwhile goal to avoid discouraging users from filing bugs. I know I'm getting tired of filing bugs on projects that I know are never going to inform me when it's fixed. I don't much enjoy wondering if the next yum update with the non-descriptive summary "New upstream release 1.1.2" will just happen to include the fix I am waiting for. I'd love to hear your thoughts and counter-arguments.
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