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hm, i also reported a few bugs to ubuntu, not one has been fixed, a few are present since a few releases.
But i think this is simply a lack of developers doing bugfixing, and not a negative attitude.

"But i think this is simply a lack of developers doing bugfixing, and not a negative attitude."

Doesn't that show a negative attitude? That's their job. Even if they are volunteer, they took the responsibility to do work on Ubuntu, so they should do it. It's that simple. If they don't want to do it, they should move aside so somebody else can do it.

This is not new. Most open-source projects are know for discarting enhancement suggestions, and minor bugs. People complain open-source software is not polished, is more difficult to use, is designed a way that doesn't always make sense.

I have taken much of my time using open-source software and reporting suggestions to revamp the applications. All of these suggestions have been either:

1. Left as "NEW" even after years
2. Marked as "WONTFIX" with a rude comment underneath

When you have reported more than a hundred, if not hundreds of feature requests, enhancements, and minor bugs and none of them have been adressed, you just stop involving yourself in testing. This is not just Ubuntu, but also software like GIMP, KDE, Seamonkey, OpenOffice.org which are also notorious for this kind of negative attitude.

Oddly the aforementioned applications aren't the most polished.

Edited 2008-01-18 12:30 UTC

Which doesn't change the fact that he was directly told that the bug WILL NOT get fixed in 7.10 (regarding aumix).

Also why the hell should he go on a mailing list? There's this bug reporting function in Launchpad. Why use two different approaches for the same thing? Shouldn't they be equally important?

(Yeah, I know that I'll get modded down by a specific group of fanboys for this...)

I guess you never were modded down that much.

I completely agree with you, though. As someone posted above you either do what you said you will or don't hinder other people in doing "your" part. And apparently kinda ignoring people that even make patches is a very bad approach.

Regarding some bugs I had the feeling Ubuntu ships disposable-distributions. That is maybe a disadvantage of so many releases.

Well I don't think it's right but at work as a box tester (where I get paid and everyone around me also does), I have to remind people over email about submitted bugs and if I don't they complain about it because I didn't constantly remind them about the bug.

It's like no one reads the bug report, we have board meetings to discuss them and every week I have to remind the developers what the bug is about and during that meeting they'd tell me to email them about it (what I do is copy paste the bug description, they seem to be happy with that).

So I have been told one too many times that it is my job as a tester to make sure people work on the bug.

Perhaps it's not ideal, but that's what needs to be done to get the job done...

Well he details more than a couple of issues, and frankly my experience has been very similar. The refusal to even look into certain common issues until users install debugging packages is a bit over the top in my opinion, especially when it comes to upgrade bugs where as the article says, reproducing the bug would require wiping one's PC and re-installing. If several people confirm the same bug then the developers should look into it whether or not the reporter can provide debugging information.

My personal issue with Ubuntu is how willing they are to ship a new release with major bugs. They seem to be far more concerned about their 6 month release schedule than shipping a solid product. IMHO they really need a shorter development period and a longer bug fixing period for each release.

I like Ubuntu, I use it for all my desktops and laptops, and for my home server (Debian for production servers), but I'm finding it increasingly frustrating when release after release ships with showstopper bugs. I almost always have a botched upgrade on at least one of my machines each time I upgrade to a new version.

That attitude is huge in the OSS community. There is an unwillingness to make products better they way users want it. They expect the users to change all study 4 years of computer science before they even take their idea into consideration... Anything less they are too stupid to bring up anything (although they themselves my not have Computer Science Degrees). As a programmer myself I know it is easy to get lost in your code and making it do what you envisioned and when someone else brings up the fact they hate it, it hurts, but you need to bite the bullet and rethink the process. OSS systems are often very configurable. Having a user change their configuration to get a seemingly unrelated application to work is a bug on the software side not on the user side. The software should be able to handle the different configurations.