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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: KDE 3.5.6 & KDE 4
From:       Matt Rogers <mattr () kde ! org>
Date:       2007-02-05 4:13:22
Message-ID: 200702042213.24899.mattr () kde ! org
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On Sunday 04 February 2007 19:27, Ian Wadham wrote:
> On Mon, 5 Feb 2007 05:43 am, Philip Rodrigues wrote:
> (Re KDE methods for handling bugs)
>
> > Thiago is quite correct - this is almost entirely a manpower-bound issue.
> > KDE gets ~80 new bug reports/wishes per day, in addition to the nearly
> > 13,000 items that already exist. To deal with that effectively takes a
> > lot of time ... <snip>
> >
> > If you have concrete suggestions for ways to improve the situation, or
> > you'd like to organise a bug triage weekend, please discuss it on
> > kde-quality@kde.org.
>
> Before going there (kde-quality), here are some ideas I would like to
> put forward, just in case I am being excessively naive ...  One of the
> truly impressive things about KDE is that you can click on Help->Report
> Bug... and get a response and a fix or a workaround, sometimes within days.
>
> Of course, that depends on who is the maintainer (the immediate
> recipient of your report), whether he/she is on the job and how
> conscientious he/she is.  Volunteers have a way of walking away
> quietly when nobody is looking, whether they are in KDE development
> or a dog-breeding club.  It is a very normal and human thing.
>
> My suggestions are:
> 1. Ping every maintainer on the bug list regularly with an email, for which
>     they just have to click Reply ... something like the ping from KDE
> lists. 2. If a maintainer does not reply, send a series of politely worded
> requests at pre-determined intervals, just in case the maintainer is on
> holiday, in hospital, just vegging out somewhere, wants to resign or has
> lost us in the spam detector.  Also, search KDE list memberships, in case
> they changed email address and did not update bugzilla.
> 3. If still no reply, start looking for another maintainer.  The urgency
> would depend on the role of the application and how unstable its history
> is. 4. If there is a bug report and no reply from the maintainer within X
> days, proceed as in 2, but with more urgent schedule and message wording.
> 5. If still no reply, escalate the report to a "triage" person, who will
> make some sort of response to the user, even if it is "please hold on while
> we track down the author", but hopefully some indication on when or whether
> the bug will be fixed, depending on its severity and urgency.
>
> All this assumes that authors and maintainers are prepared to take
> responsibility individually for their work.  In my experience, most authors
> *are* willing and volunteers are mostly nice people, who will do almost
> anything, if asked nicely and if you point out how other people are
> depending on them.
>
> All the best, Ian W.

Actually, I would recommend against this. It only adds noise to the bug report 
and doesn't really give the person reporting the bug or the person handling 
the bug any value added. It turns the nice people working on the bug into 
mean people and makes the people reporting the bug seem impatient, rude, and 
selfish.
-- 
Matt

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