On Tuesday, June 4, 2013 10:19:27 AM UTC+2, Davide Cavestro wrote:
>
> @Ed
> I really hope you are right... but so far I've had the same feelings of 
> Mauro and David
> I guess some discouragement/vexation could be avoided adding an 
> explanatory comment before or contextually tagging an issue as *
> AssumedStale*, and especially avoid stating
>
>> I spent more than half an hour reading the code and the specs and doing 
>> tests. We can't realistically spend as many time on each and every opened 
>> issue. 
>
> That really makes me wonder...
>

The quote above is out of context: it was a reply to Mauro's "This is the 
kind of feedback I would have appreciated before setting the AssumedStale 
keyword."

So let's try again:

   1. the issue tracker has been neglected for years, leading to many 
   issues open and never triaged; we need to clean that up
   2. we can't realistically spend half an hour for each and every of these 
   issues: 1500 issues or so would take 750 man×hour, and nobody works 
   full-time just on this (that'd be 100 workdays, i.e. 5 months, if one 
   person were dedicated full-time verifying issues *before* closing them; 
   surely we can spend everyone's time better)
   3. so as Ray Cromwell 
says<https://plus.google.com/111204862432674062264/posts/A2SDJXAAZJ2>, 
   the only viable option is to "crowd source": when in doubt, close the issue 
   and see if someone complains, and *then only* spend time on that issue.

Then we have to set priorities, because we're not paid to work on GWT (some 
Google employees are, but their priorities are the ones of Google; this is 
the reason why the issue tracker had been neglected for so long and why 
Google chose to make GWT more open by forming the Steering Committee).
On the issue Mauro points out and many others where Daniel replies with 
"feel free to provide patch", we can reopen it but if nobody spends the 
time to fix it, in a year from now we'll have the same mess in the issue 
tracker. On that specific issue, I could change the status to NotPlanned 
(so it's still closed, but removes the word "stale") but would it change 
anything to the way the issue is handled after that? No. (though if you 
think NotPlanned would be better than AssumedStale, I can make that change).

I've had issues open for years, patches pending review for months. I've 
been there. Daniel also closes some of the issues I reported some time ago 
[1], and my response is to post patches: e.g. 
https://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/detail?id=6227
I understand that everyone does not have the GWT sources setup to hack on 
them, so I don't expect patches coming that fast after an issue has been 
closed, but at one point this is something you'll want to do. I report 
issues on other projects too, and when possible I try to provide patches 
(particularly if that's blocking me for my job). I don't expect every patch 
to come without prior discussion either: if you're not sure how to fix 
something, ask on the gwt-contrib group and we'll try to help as best as we 
can.

(and this is in addition to also providing patches for other issues 
–e.g. https://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/detail?id=8171–, 
following comments on the issue tracker to help Daniel in triaging issues 
–the reason I answered on Mauro's issue–, follow the group and 
stackoverflow, etc. and everything being done mostly during my free time 
–most issues I reported were for projects at work–)

Put differently: we're all in the same boat!

BTW, I'm with Ed here: there haven't been as many external patches since we 
moved to Gerrit and started closing issues and asking for patches; and the 
move to Gerrit really speed up the review process.

[1] 
https://code.google.com/p/google-web-toolkit/issues/list?can=1&q=status:AssumedStale%20reporter:[email protected]&sort=-closed&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Owner%20Milestone%20Summary%20Stars%20Closed

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