FOSS needs a central bug tracker

Basil Mohamed Gohar abu_hurayrah at hidayahonline.org
Tue Apr 21 22:39:55 UTC 2009


On 04/22/2009 04:58 AM, Callum Lerwick wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-04-21 at 22:37 +0200, Mark wrote:
>    
>> I'm also playing a bit with the idea that there is one central bug
>> tracking system with ALL (ideally) foss projects in it and that place
>> is the main and upstream place(that's the general idea you all know by
>> now).
>>      
>
> No. This is not desirable. Forget it, it's never going to happen. Clear
> your mind. Think git, not CVS. Think distributed bug tracking.
>
> Interoperation, not consolidation.
>
> And there's the basic fact that no one wants a single point of failure.
> What if the One Bug Tracker To Rule Them All goes down? The entire Open
> Source world screeches to a halt? Who is everyone going to trust to run
> this thing? What if the OBTTRTA gets hacked?
>
> The beauty of Open Source is that people are *not* forced to work
> together.
>    
I think the same argument could be made to apply to FreeNode for IRC, 
and yet, it seems to be working out just fine for the vast majority of 
FOSS projects.  So, the "One X to Y them all" concept can theoretically 
work for some aspects of FOSS development.  However, everyone's (almost, 
at least) are already using FreeNode, so we don't really have to 
convince anyone.

Having said that, I think you're on to something about the git vs. CVS 
concept - distributed bug tracking.  There's already something minorly 
akin to this with feature of remote bugs in Bugzilla, such as in 
Ubuntu's launchpad or Gnome's Bugzilla.  Maybe it's not single-sign on 
that's needed, but a standard interface for bugs across different 
implementations, such that data can be gleaned from them via web 
services.  Yeah, doesn't sound so yummy, but it's something that can be 
implemented gradually, as well.




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