All, Let me mention some of the reasons we as a project could use a bug tracker which have nothing to do with actually fixing bugs.
(1) Testing: a bug tracker could be used for beta testing instead of the ad-hoc system I'm writing. Assuming it has the right features, of course. (2) User information: right now, if a user has an issue, it's very very hard for them to answer the question "Has this already been reported and/or fixed in a later release." This is a strong source of frustration for business users who don't actively participate in the community, a complaint I have heard multiple times. (3) Lack of a bug tracker with a web services API prevents downstream projects (PostGIS, RHEL, Ubuntu, Django, Drupal, etc.) from linking in PostgreSQL bug reports which affect their users. Also, because these projects are used to bug trackers, they get confused when they need to report a bug to us. (4) Because having a bug tracker is seen as standard and mainstream among OSS projects, the fact that we don't have one is regarded as oddball and backwards, and does result in some companies choosing not to use PostgreSQL because we're perceived as "too weird" and "anti-commercial". Where *fixing* bugs is concerned, I'm concerned that a bug tracker would actually slow things down. I'm dubious about our ability to mobilize volunteers for anything other than bug triage, and the fact that we *don't* triage is an advantage in bug report responsiveness (I have "unconfirmed" bugs for Thunderbird which have been pending for 3 years). So I'm skeptical about bug trackers on that score. However, for the four non-fixing items, having some kind of bug tracker would be a real asset to the project. I'm just not sure what kind of bug tracker that would be. BTW, we talked to Debian about debbugs ages ago, and the Debian project said that far too much of debbugs was not portable to other projects. -- Josh Berkus PostgreSQL Experts Inc. http://pgexperts.com -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
