Re: [gentoo-dev] Quantity of open bugs

[Chris Richards <gizmo@giz-works.com>]

On 03/10/2011 02:25 PM, Kevin F. Quinn wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I was nosing through bugzilla, and noticed:
>
> * Number of open bugs is greater than 14,000
> * Number of open bugs untouched for more than 2 years - well over 2000.
> * Number of open bugs untouched between 1 and 2 years - well over 2000.
> * Number of open bugs untouched between 6 months and 1 year - well over
>    2000.
> * Number of open bugs untouched between 3 months and 6 months - over
>    2000
>
> The winner is bug #78406, which hasn't been touched for over 2240 days
> - over 6 years - at the time of writing.
>
> I would guess these old untouched bugs aren't actually going to be
> touched, ever - a lot simply won't be relevant any more for one reason
> or another.  All they're doing is cluttering up bugzilla.
I think Duncan has already covered the major points I was going to 
mention: particularly with respect to the fact that we are all 
volunteers and thus subject to resource constraints that other projects 
might not have.  I realize that it is frustrating to a user to have a 
bug sit for a year (or more) without ever being resolved (or even looked 
at), but there is really only one way to resolve that: get someone who 
has the time and expertise to step in and fill the gap.  Given that we 
can't exactly hold a gun to people's heads and MAKE them work on Gentoo 
stuff (nor would I personally be inclined to trust code produced using 
such methods), I really don't see another alternative.

We closed a number of bugs related to SELinux recently; many of those 
bugs had been open for quite some time and things had changed 
sufficiently that we believed that the bug itself was no longer 
relevant, or we needed feedback from the user and didn't get any.  Some 
of those bugs had been open for a couple of years.  But we reviewed EACH 
of those bugs and made a decision on a case-by-case basis.

I understand and appreciate the desire to close open bugs that are 
cluttering up the bugzilla.  Not only do they create extra cruft for 
everyone to wade through, they also make Gentoo look bad (my GOD, 
they've got open bugs dating back to the founding of the Roman 
Empire!).  However, I'm not convinced that blanket closing bugs that are 
over x days (weeks, months, years) is the best (or even desirable) approach.

If a bug is related to a package that no longer exists, then it seems 
pretty obvious that there is no need to keep the bug around.

If the bug is waiting on feedback from a user, and that user hasn't 
provided the requested feedback in, say, 60 days (after a bump to the 
bug) then I'd say that the bug is arguably no longer of importance to 
the user, or at least the email address we have on file for that user 
doesn't work any more.

Beyond those two conditions, I'd really be loathe to close anything 
without good evidence to indicate that it either is no longer relevant, 
or it can't be fixed.

Just my $0.02 (not adjusted for currency devaluation)

Later,
Gizmo