[request-sponsor] Shooting my mouth off

[Pete Bentley]

On Fri, Feb 01, 2008 at 10:07:09AM -0500, James Carlson wrote:
 Let's also take the whole sponsor question away, as that is a
 temporary issue that's being fixed.  

Sorry to sidetrack what is a very useful thread, but just how temporary
a problem is that likely to be?  And how about the situation where
the sponsor becomes unresponsive (possibly for very valid reasons)?

Case in point, bug 6445725 (newfs / zpool create on firewire device
hangs the OS) which really needs fixing before other contributors can
do useful work on the firewire subsystem. Jurgen Keil submitted a
working and reasonable looking (to me) patch well over a year ago,
and even prodded the sponsor back in August (see 
http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/2007-August/042143.html)
and yet this still appears to be stuck.

Pete.

[request-sponsor] Bug 6309693

[Pete Bentley]

On 5 Jan 2008, at 13:46, Archana wrote:
 Hello ,
 I had previously send the fix for this bug, but i cant find it now,  
 so I am sending it again.


 ASSERT(MUTEX_HELD(mod_lock));

   if ((fp = ctf_bufopen(ctfsect, symsect, strsect, error)) == NULL)
 +  dprintf(?cannot open ctf_bufopen()?);  
return (NULL);

Even without looking at the bug report or the relevant source file,  
it's obvious by inspection that this cannot be the correct fix, nor  
can it have been tested.

And in fact bug 6309693 relates to locale definitions, so it's rather  
unlikely that this patch to what looks like a kernel source file will  
fix it.

Judging from the number of similar postings, I'm guessing that some  
professor at the Amrita School of Engineering has set Find and fix a  
Solaris bug as a piece of coursework for an undergraduate course.

Now whilst it's good for Solaris' outreach to involve these students,  
and good for their education, I have to question the value of the  
exercise if the students don't take the time or care to develop  
correct solutions and submit them in a useful way... It just ends up  
offloading their education onto the people who sponsor the fixes.

Pete.