Re: dormant bugs and our perception

[Greg DeKoenigsberg <gdk redhat com>]

On Mon, 31 Dec 2007, Jon Stanley wrote:

> I was triaging old bugs in the FC6 kernel, and got this back form a
> reporter.    While I agree that a lack of response can be frustrating
> to a reporter, I'm not entirely sure what (if anything) we can do
> about it.- I'm sending this to marketing-list since it seems to be a
> problem for us rather than QA - though probably both, and I'm sure
> alot of us are on both.

Handling this exact kind of problem is why bug triagers are worth their 
weight in gold.

Because here's the thing: people don't expect all of their bugs to be 
magically fixed.  (Well, some do, but it doesn't make good business sense 
or good community sense to cater to unreasonable people.)

What they *do* expect is for someone to say, "gee, thanks for posting this 
bug, we'll set the priority accordingly and maybe poke a developer."  And 
we fail pretty miserably at that.

Cross-posting to the Fedora advisory board list.  Our inability to create 
and nurture a bug triage community continues to be painful, and our 
current QA resources within Red Hat continue to be (necessarily) 
technically focused rather than community focused.  This is a problem we 
need to solve.

--g

--
Greg DeKoenigsberg
Community Development Manager
Red Hat, Inc. :: 1-919-754-4255
"To whomsoever much hath been given...
...from him much shall be asked"