Glyphobet writes "I've largely stopped reporting bugs to Ubuntu because of the condescending and dismissive attitude from their developers. Until Ubuntu's bug management culture starts to change, people like me, who can actually help make Ubuntu better, will be less and less likely to contribute."
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Member since:2005-08-11
"Quick note... I wasn't rude in my post and don't see the need for you to be in yours... I'm just making a point, hear me out, then reply."
I don't think I was rude. If honest and rude are the same thing, then I guess I will continue to be rude.
"You have made a leap of faith, equating "fixing bugs" and "fixing all bugs" some how... I'm not sure, but again, it's a nonsense assumption"
Uh, some of the bugs in the system span 2 or 3 different releases, that is unacceptable. it is not a leap of faith, if I was paying for Ubuntu support, I would expect that bugs that affect me are fixed. period. Not closed with no explanation, and don't blame me either. If it not going to be fixed, TELL ME. Don't just close the ticket.
There is a difference between prioritizing bugs and just not dealing with bugs. One of the bugs listed in the article linked here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/procps/+bug/131188
was not even looked at, if you look at the comments, two assumptions were made, and then it was closed, and misreporting swap is a pretty big bug. This is the sort of behavior that is unacceptable.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Quick note... I wasn't rude in my post and don't see the need for you to be in yours... I'm just making a point, hear me out, then reply.
Interestingly enough bug reporting and bug fixing is not a closed-loop system. It never has been and never will be. As your users scale up and potential reports for bugs increase, the gap between fixes and reports grows larger and larger, meaning that only "high profile" items will ever bubble to the top of the conscious of the developers. The way for a bug to become "high profile" is either it's severity or popularity.
There are varying thoughts on how bug trackers should be managed and the issue is only relevant for huge projects. The Eclipse Foundation (www.eclipse.org) has a dialog that took more than a year just to decide on how to use the "REMINDER" flag for bugs, because of the volume of bug reports it was effectively removing bugs out of the lime-light and burying them due to lack of profile. That was a big hairy mess... in that particular case, if they had closed bugs as something they wouldn't fix *right then*, it would have given an opportunity for other folks to re-report the issue and bring it back into the spotlight. But instead the "REMINDER" version of the bug would sit in limbo, sinking follow-up reports of the same bug.
Then there are other beliefs that a bug should never be touched unless it's addressed... and in those cases as reports come in, in increasing scale, they simply sit at the "NEW" stage forever and never get touched.
Then there are the bug-tracker nazis that feel *Every* bug should be processed within days of being filed... in those cases bugs that are not immediately deemed to be show-stoppers are closed out as WONTFIX until their profile is inreased by user demand for example.
With a project as large as Ubuntu there is an actual limitation on what people can physically do... I think it's absolutely rediculous to think that all these bugs *should* stay open or possibly *could* be fixed for a small collection of developers. And there is a real financial and psychological cost to growing a team beyond a point... so simply throwing more developers at the problem like they are squirrels *does not work* in the real world.
Your comments suggest to me that you have never shipped a real commercial product before or done development professionally for a commercial company... you'll probably reply to the contrary, but it seems you haven't experienced the real ins and outs of these settings... just theoretical versions of them.
When MS acts like this, people scream, kick , bite and generally make a lot of noise.
This is a nonsensical argument... Microsoft and Canonical are structured and run in very different manners. You cannot compare the two (one glaring difference would be the lack of an open bug tracker and communication with the dev team at MS).
Canonical is a COMPANY, trying to make money by supporting Ubuntu. They cannot do this if they do not fix bugs.
You have made a leap of faith, equating "fixing bugs" and "fixing all bugs" some how... I'm not sure, but again, it's a nonsense assumption... your logic here suggests that there are companies that have products that are free of bugs... or some other absolute along those lines, like Canonical is unique in it's inability to tackle every bug that is filed.
Again, big leap of faith here in your logic, making all sorts of assumptions about developers, team size, user base, team dynamics, etc. The rest of my posts explains in more detail why this is a narrow-minded and incorrect assumption.