On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 9:52 PM, Mike Hughes <[email protected]> wrote: > I feel that, as they DO provide the issue tracker, they should also > provide some feedback to the issues on it. Otherwise, why have the > tracker at all?
I notice how you declined to actually answer my question. If other commercially-viable smartphone platforms have a public issue tracker and do a better job of providing feedback, let's document that. I don't know if they do or they don't, and comparing Android to its direct competition is likely to be a more compelling argument to The Powers That Be than comparing it to your own straw man. You have a vision for what role the issue tracker should take. It's not an unreasonable vision. It's just not one that the people who host the issue tracker happen to share. When you're in their house, you play by their rules. As it stands, the issue "tracker" is simply a bug-reporting mechanism, nothing more, nothing less. It is not a place for debate, it is not a place for decisions, it is not a place for feedback; it is simply a way of supplying bug details to help expedite a fix. Comparing Android to the ideal open source project is not going to get much traction, if any. Comparing Android to competitors, however, has a greater chance of garnering interest. So, if you can document how Android is substantially inferior in this area to, say, Apple, that would be a worthwhile exercise. > Android, unlike the other "commercially-viable" platforms, is > purportedly an open platform. The community is meant to be somewhat > involved in it's future. No more than any other open source project. Those who contribute code or other assets have a chance of being "involved in it's [sic] future". After that, it's up for grabs. Some open source projects are very responsive to issue trackers; others less so. Now, Android is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay on the commercial side of the open source spectrum, being only a notch or two away from "open source in license only". The reasons for this and their ramifications have been debated ad nauseum on this list and elsewhere. > Also, if the argument is that Android shouldn't respond to community > requests because the competition don't, shouldn't Android be offering > the features (or similar) that the competition does? I feel quite confident that there are things that Android offers that its competition does not. Similarly, there are things that the competition offers that Android does not. It's kinda the way competing technologies work. > ...it's really that there isn't any > feedback from the devs. If the issues are being worked on, provide > some feedback, or shut down the issue tracker. Otherwise it's the net > equivalent of /dev/null . No, it's mostly a bug-submission form, occasionally used by Google engineers to try to get more details about said bugs. Anybody who tries using it for anything else is welcome to do so but should not be expecting Google to necessarily reciprocate. -- Mark Murphy (a Commons Guy) http://commonsware.com | http://github.com/commonsguy http://commonsware.com/blog | http://twitter.com/commonsguy Warescription: Three Android Books, Plus Updates, One Low Price! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en.
