Mark Mielke <m...@mark.mielke.cc> writes: >On 01/04/2010 06:46 PM, Karl Fogel wrote: >> "Hyrum K. Wright"<hyrum_wri...@mail.utexas.edu> writes: >>> Because we are a large and mature project, there is also a certain >>> amount of maintenance cost just to maintain parity with ourselves and >>> other SCM systems. Our ever-increasing list of outstanding issues >>> witnesses to the fact that we aren't very good at maintaining that >>> parity. >>> >> The ever-increasing list of outstanding issues reflects a large user >> base, most likely :-). I'm not saying SVN shouldn't implement features >> from other VCSs where appropriate, but don't take the growth of the bug >> database as a bad thing -- bug growth corresponds to users. > >I think this is only true in the sense that more users have a better >chance of exposing existing problems. (Assuming the 'bugs' are actual >bugs' and not feature requests) > >More bugs means more technical debt, which means less efficiency for >the entire project over time. At some critical point, the product >developers spend 100% of their time addressing defects and work >arounds, and 0% of the time improving the product. > >Killing technical debt can be very important in terms of enabling >features to be developed.
I'm *totally* trolling now, and I'll own up to it... While I actually agree with a lot of what you've written in this thread, I think this conflation of bugs with tech debt is a mistake. They're not the same thing at all. I almost wrote that in a reply, but then realized that I'd seen this often enough that -- help me, I have truly gone to the dark side -- I thought it might be worth a blog post. So: http://www.rants.org/2010/01/10/bugs-users-and-tech-debt/ It would only be proper to flame me there, I suppose :-). Seriously: I don't think the SVN project, or any other project, should treat the bug list as tech debt. It's not. Best, -Karl
