On 2 Nov 2002 at 11:36, Rasjid Wilcox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > For example, there is no reason that we (the Devinfo community) could not set > up our own bug-tracking system, which would then be available to both us and > Mitel. In my view, a publicly accessible bug tracking system (for > non-security related bugs) would be a Good Thing(tm). One of the key > benefits of open source is the 'many eyeball' effect, but it only works if > the bug tracking system is public, since the person who finds a bug is rarely > the person who can fix it. The best way to demonstrate this to Mitel would > be to do it, and contribute back fixes.
The bugs issue (I'm particuraly thinking of the beta's here) isn't handled particularly well as it currently stands, IMHO. As I see it, there isn't enough transparancy with reported bugs due to the bug ticket system being available only to Mitel. This loads both testers & Mitel with unneccessary duplicated effort if multiple reports are made about the same bug. It's fairly pointless to issue emails saying that your ticket is closed if you can't then see what was done to address the bug. Having more than one bug tracking system isn't the answer - just having a browsable (read-only) version of the Mitel in-house system would be a big improvement so that testers could concentrate on testing features that don't have bug tickets - or re- testing features that have been fixed. We must all be familiar with bug fixes that inadvertently introduce other subtle bugs - a more open bug tracking system would allow more people to test to ensure this hasn't happened. I also had the experience during the SME 5.5 beta-testing phase that at least 1 bug that I reported & was informed was fixed made it into the release version of SME 5.5 (OK, it was subsequently addressed in a Blade update), but it does make me wonder at the priorities which Mitel assign to bugs in betas. SME 5.5 seemed (to me, anyway) to be released before it was really ready - pressures from marketing, perhaps? None of the above is an attack on Mitel - I have developed software commercially for 20 years so I know how difficult & time-consuming it is to manage beta tests. Mitel have a superb product, make no mistake. -- Nick Ramsay Witzend Computer Services http://www.witzendcs.co.uk/ -- Please report bugs to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] (only) to discuss security issues Support for registered customers and partners to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Searchable archive at http://www.mail-archive.com/devinfo%40lists.e-smith.org
