Might wanna point to the plagiarized source - that took me hours to write :). Seriously, that is a good point. I realize that there is limited reporter time. However, there are *many* more than 590 reporters to report bugs - it becomes an issue of supply and demand at that point - the demand for developer time outstrips the supply of it. Sad but true... On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 5:52 AM, Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi > > Following from experience with the recent Fedora Bugzilla mass-triage, > I figured that I would write a few words about the state of bugs in > open source projects, and where people's perception can tend to fall > short of reality. [Some of you will recognize where it's largely > plagiarized from] > > OSS developers assume that because there is not a dedicated paid > testing team hidden within the walls of a particular contracting > company, that there are infinite testing resources. Instead, just as > with proprietary software, the resources are finite, the amount of > hours in a day are finite, and the fact is that most of bug reporters > are contributing to an OSS community in their spare time, not being > paid to do it full-time. In fact the overwhelming majority of users is > pretty happy to rant on discussion forums and mailing lists and let > software authors go fish for problems themselves, rather than expend > the time and energy to push report through "proper" channels. In fact, > it is debatable that the number of OSS bug reporters is growing faster > than the number of OSS code authors. > > Given these resource limitations, bug reporters have to be selective > in their reporting. The volume of code and the number of problems to > report is literally more than they can handle. In order to handle the > workload, they filter ruthlessly. If a project takes months to answer > a bug report, or repeatedly asks to retest or confirm a problem no one > has looked at still exists, that's unlikely to get as much attention > as a project that is quick to process reports and does not make > reporters feel they're wasting their time. I'm not saying that this is > good, bad, or indifferent, but simply a fact of life in the open > source world. > > In conclusion, the open source bug reporting community is very happy > to help projects better their software. However, the people that > produce problem reports are very much inundated with issues that > should be reported. What does this mean to you, the bug handlers? That > we'd like for you to understand that every problem is not going to be > reported in a perfect way, and simply asking reporters to work more on > reports is not a guarantee that they will do it. In fact most of them > will just report their activity to channels where the bar is set > lower, and the cost/benefits ratio is better for them. The only reward > for reporting issues is having them handled. When handling is poor > this ratio gets very bad quickly. > > There are humans the other side of the channel too. > > -- > Nicolas Mailhot > > > > -- > fedora-devel-list mailing list > fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list > -- Jon Stanley Fedora Bug Wrangler jstanley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
