On Mon, 13 Jan 2003, Georgina Economou wrote:

>> >I could see how one distro could use bugzilla very well against
>> >another's for slick marketing
>>
>> More conspiracy theories?  ;o)  A common theme lately.  ;o)
>>
>> Anyway, if a bug is distro specific, then IMHO it is rather
>> obvious, and even if some distro was crooked as you seem to
>> suggest, there would be enough other people involved that were
>> not from the crooked distro to kick their ass.  Slashdot is a
>> good place to report such violations.
>>
>
>No Mike, I am talking about who controls the reports and who
>sees them.

Well, that is up to whomever maintains the bugzilla database 
officially ultimately.  They can put different private bug report 
categories in if they think it is useful and/or necessary.  


>Who owns the data?  This is RHAT's baby, Bugzilla, so I take it
>that they would be a serious Admin to this and would have the
>ability to pull data as they want, without asking XFree86 for
>it.

Who owns bug report data?  That's kindof funny.  It's public bug 
report data, who cares really.  Who "owns" gnome.org's bug report 
data?  Does anyone?  Does anyone even care, or have they ever 
even considered the concept?

I don't know about you, or what other's think, but the concept 
you put forth is quite a foreign one to me.


>I can see that RHAT would then claim that they have less bugs
>per bugzilla reporting etc and so forth and then would make
>lists like: Top Buggy Code Top Bug Squatter and other
>absurdities ad nauseam.  My concern is where does an extent
>example exist of how Bugzilla is being used by a non-RHAT owned
>project, like XFree86.

Oh of course.  Red Hat just can't wait to do all of these evil 
things, so they can make money selling XFree86 bug report data on 
CDROMs in magazines.


>And finally, if RHAT has Bugzilla on their own distro right now,
>why do you need us at all? You already have the setup, the
>information etc.  I don't see why we need to be involved, either
>using or reporting to it.  Tell me or preferably show me how I
>am wrong.

I've already said this many times.  This has nothing to do with 
Red Hat.  You just can't let that go, can you.

*I*, *me*, Mike Harris, would like to work with the rest of the
community that exists out there of XFree86 users, regardless of
what OS they use, regardless of what distribution they use, in
particular maintainers of other OS's and also other X developers
whom aren't at a particular vendor or anything, but are just
contributing to the open source of it all.  I would like to get
everyone working TOGETHER, because basically "united we stand,
divided we fall".  That's not a new way of thinking you know.  
In fact, it is the entire concept that brought open source into
being in the first place.  People working together towards a
common goal.

Right now, we don't have that with XFree86 as much as we could
have.  We've got many large groups of people using XFree86 in
different distros and OSs with no collaboration between those 
distros on tracking bugs, fixing problems, sharing patches, and 
other similar co-operative and collaborative development.  We've 
got "each man for himself", and I personally think that sucks.  
Every other distro X maintainer I've talked to so far also thinks 
that sucks.  The entire open source community who is aware of 
this whole discussion thinks that sucks.

My hope of course, is that XFree86.org IS interested and does
want to participate in an open manner.  However, wether
XFree86.org decides to care about this at all or not, I still do
care, and other maintainers and developers do care also.  
Everyone stands to gain from collaboration.  If one group doesn't 
want to participate - fine.  The other groups of people who do, 
can still benefit.  Perhaps not as much with one group not 
present, but it can still be beneficial to everyone.

Red Hat bugzilla, is Red Hat bugzilla.  That doesn't help Debian 
out much now does it.  Not if they have to poll our bugzilla, 
Mandrakes bugzilla, FreeBSD's bugzilla, and 40 others.  It 
doesn't help us out either to have to poll Debian's bugzilla, 
Mandrake's, etc.    All for what are common XFree86 bugs, common 
problems, patch submissions, and other things we all share anyway 
right now, just in a very extremely inefficient manner.  I have 
to download Debian stuff and unpack it, and hunt through it to 
look for patches.  Not being a Debian person myself, it's a bit 
awkward but not complex or impossible by far.

It is a bit of work though.  Debian also has to go out and poll
Red Hat, Mandrake, etc. RPM packages for patches in hopes to find
fixes for issues that they might not have fixes for.  It is a lot
of extra work to have to go out, get this stuff, pull it in, and
have no collaborative feedback between each other about what any
of it does.  Users don't have a way of querying for XFree86 bugs.  
They have a way of querying 15 separate distro specific bug
databases in hopes they find the problem they're having and a
solution, and running all over the world doing so.

If someone submits a patch to Red Hat, when does Debian even get 
to see it?  When they poll the Red hat bugzilla for patches?  
When some Debian user rips open Red Hat Linux XFree86.src.rpm 
hoping perhaps Red Hat might have a fix?  The same goes in 
reverse for a Red Hat user looking to Debian for fixes as well, 
and to other distros equally too.  Everyone loses because there 
is no easy way to know who has a fix for what, if it is well 
tested, if it actually does fix the problem, and if so for how 
many people, and wether or not it has been submitted and/or 
applied to the XFree86.org repository.

There is very little collaboration going on, and it hurts 
the open source community at large, it's users, and 
each of the different distros that use XFree86.  It also 
hurts XFree86.org wether or not they know it or want to admit it 
or acknowledge it.  It hurts in that it hampers progress.

Microsoft is likely laughing their heads off, over things like 
this.  Open source projects and vendors who think each other is 
out to get each other.


All you seem to see, seems to be that this is all about Red Hat's
big evil masterplan to get XFree86.org to agree to a bugzilla bug
database so that Red Hat (and only Red Hat) can dump all of their
XFree86 bugs into the public database, and then wait for everyone
else to use the database, so that Red Hat can then data mine the
database and try to make it look like all XFree86 related bug
reports are only in other distributions and not Red Hat.

Do you have any idea, whatsoever exactly how rediculous your 
conspiracy theories sound?

Have you even once, for a single minute thought about me
personally as an open source developer with a good will to help
his fellow man, and to work on the project along with others for
the benefit of all?  As a human being even?  Must every comment
that comes my way have Red Hat's name and Red Hat conspiracy
theories attached to it?

It's almost as if it is a losing battle even TRYING to contribute
fresh new ideas and thoughts to XFree86.org.  Next to zero
encouragment comes back, next to zero support of fresh ideas,
lots of walls put up, and very little open source community
spirit and appearance to want to work with other people to make
something better out of it all.  It's like you think nobody else
can have an honest thought of good will to share with others, and 
there has to be some alterior motive behind it all.  Some more 
than others, depending on what company they've allegedly sold 
their soul to.

I apologize if I'm offended anyone by anything I'm saying or have
said.  My intentions are to try and bring people together, but 
it's like trying to bring together Mike Tyson and Xander 
Holifield to an after Christmas sale at Walmart and having people 
missing ears when all is said and done.

I'm very very frustrated by all of this negativity and complete
lack of trust.  There is a great deal of public interest in
having an open community of collaborative development on X and
related things.  The only side of it all that doesn't appear to
want to be open to mutually beneficial positive collaboration
with outside involvement is XFree86.org.

While that may be upsetting, it wont stop me from continuing to
try though.


-- 
Mike A. Harris



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