On Mon, Jan 13, 2003 at 11:10:14AM +0100, Egbert Eich wrote: > Matt Wilson writes: > > > > I'm not attempting to bully anyone, nor have I argued that you or any > > other member (individual or corporate) of XFree86. However, there are > > plenty of volunteers that are offering to set up and maintain a bug > > tracking system for you. I think that such a project would be much > > more successful if it were endorsed by XFree86 and integrated into the > > development policy for the project. > > > > Sorry, this is not how it goes. We won't be willing > to adopt anything blindly. There is a German saying > applying here: > 'Never buy a cat in the bag!' > > 1. First there should be a proposal > 2. Secondly there should be a test implementation > as proof of concept we can work with and see > how well it goes. > 4. Thirdly this should be evaluated > - if we think it is usable at all. > - what modifications we would like to see. > 5. The modified system needs to get retested and reevaluated. > 6. This is the earliest stage we can talk about a more or > less formal policy. > > Up to now it is not even clear who should be able to > submit to this bug tracking system: > Should it be internal only? > Should only projects like GNOME, KDE etc and > distributions like RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake be able to > submit bugs? > Or should it be open to the general public?
I agree with your points here Egbert. Someone needs to step forward to collate these ideas and put the initial system together. We seem to have people stepping forward with ideas and a few who claim that they'll do the initial work on setting up, but nothing ever happens. My own personal opinion lies with the fact that if this is setup, who will have the staying power to maintain it. Most of the XFree86 Core Team have been around a long time and seen various developers come and go around the project. It's obvious to me that some developers will use it, and others may not, or even may not all the time. Therefore that 'team' who has to maintain it need to be able to stick around for it to be of long term use. If these 'bug' maintainers come and go, I can see the whole process collapsing into one big heap of unusable data. Additionally the maintainers need to qualify the bug reports before it gets to core developers who need to spend precious time isolating the problem and coming up with the patch. If this process is too time consuming, these reports will be left untouched. And one of the most frustrating problems of all, is bug reports to core developers who don't have access to the hardware. I know this is some of the pro's of having a bug database in that someone can look at what needs fixing who has the appropriate hardware, but seldom is this the case - having several people report problems to me that cannot be fixed without some severe manpower in fixing it. I don't think I've heard any of the XFree86 Core Team denouncing a bug database, just the fact that if it consumes much of their precious time then things will stagnate. If there is a team here who want to set one up and maintain independently of XFree86, then there's nothing stopping them. Even doing it this way, may well get the momentum, in that lots of things would be ironed out, and provide something workable for the future. There's been several conversations of this in the past and nothing fruitful has come of it just because the XFree86 Core Team don't push for it, and so others see that as counter-productive. Don't. Someone needs to put their own effort in. Even if the XFree86 Core Team don't participate in this bug database it should in no way effect it's usefulness to those who want one. If someone enters a bug report, then it's perfectly possible for someone completely new to the project to fix the bug and submit a patch to XFree86 without any involvement of the Core Team, apart from actually committing the fix, then enter onto the bug database 'Fixed - appending commit' in the bug report. Step forward those who want it and start doing it. If it can be shown to be productive then there's something more to discuss, but we're covering the same ground again and again. Get going on it and prove it works, but don't expect everyone to use it and live with that fact - it's open source and you can't force people into a way of working.... Alan. _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
