On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 1:49 PM, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Stephen John Smoogen wrote: > > > > > Having read this same exact conversation on Debian, Mandrake, FSF > > lists.. this is a common thing. Every bug reporting experience is > > hostile because it doesn't deliver instant gratification, and you are > > usually cranky because the software is not working. > > > > Part of the hostility is already there because the end user hit a bug he > didn't expect in a released product and he's already wasted a lot of his own > time. The only way I can see to improve this in fedora is to get more > testing in rawhide - but I don't know how to get a larger or more active > community involved there. People's expectations are just higher than they > used to be and since last year's release tends to be 'good enough', they > aren't as excited as they used to be about trying something newer and > better. Or maybe it's just me getting old and cranky... > > Well that comes down to managing expectations. Fedora is not a stable product in the sense that a washing machine is. It is a fastly moving prototype product using volunteer labour. Packages can be updated on a released version that has bugs that weren't in the 'tested' version. > > And how can Fedora better help maintainers and users. > > If the previous release was in fact "good enough", don't break the fedora > released version by pushing out new bugs that are known but not fixed in > rawhide. A judgment call, of course. > Every released package is good enough for some segment of the audience. I had to support a Red Hat Linux 5.2 box in 2003 because the product was good enough for the customer and all they wanted was it to be secure. The box is still up and going... though the owner is thinking that RHEL-2.1 might be stable enough to move to. And every product is going to have bugs. Some subtle and some obvious but non-fixable without adding more bugs. If Fedora were a business with paid employees, I would probably look at reworking how bugs etc are dealt with: Definitions: Customer is a person who negotiates a product from a producer for payment. They are in consuming/giving frame of mind. User is a person who uses the product. They are mainly in a take/consuming frame of mind. A. Customer sends in bug report. B. Level 1 triager gets bug report and makes sure it covers the basic questions (Who, What, Why, When ,Where). If not sends back report to customer for further details. If no response in X days.. close the report as NON-ANSWERED. C. If the report does have the information, triager sees if they can replicate the problem within a set of known VM's that the customer can have access to. If the problem is impossible to replicate in the known VM's we move it to Level 2 where they would work out a way to replicate (depending on the problem the customer may have to pay for an identical system here.) D. If the problem is replicated via Level 1 or Level 2 it goes to the developer team in charge of that product. They work on where the bug is and how to best fix it. Any fixes then go through a regression model and are fast-tracked to the customer. E. The developer works with the customer and if the 'patch' fixes the problem and doesnt regress other things the ticket is moved into RESOLVED state. F. The resolved state puts it into the queue of people who gather statistics and make sure that the customer is really happy with the fix etc etc. They can move it to CLOSED when they are happy with it. Very manpower intensive and expensive so I would charge quite a bit for that level of "bug-free" ness. In the case of Fedora, Debian, etc there are few customers funding this... and the manpower is mainly limited to volunteers. And while there are quite a few volunteers, there are few qualified ones to the level that many "users" expect. -- Stephen J Smoogen. -- CSIRT/Linux System Administrator How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice" -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
