Susan G. Kleinmann wrote: > So, except where the ratio of > triviality-of-bug / responsiveness-of-maintainer > is near 0, or (better) where the reporter realizes the maintainer > has his own motivations for fixing the bug right away, I agree with Ian that > the right thing to do is to log the bug. I believe the bug tracking system > may be the single most important aspect of the Debian system.
As a maintainer whose responsiveness is probably less than ideal[1], I must say I rather like having the bug tracking system, and I would just as soon have people report stuff there. It saves me from having to keep a separate list of "private" bugs, and while it may not be a "pole of shame", if the list gets long, it tends to inspire some effort to reduce it to something a little less personally embarrasing :-). One enhancement I would like to see is the ability to access the buglist by package. No, not sorted by package, but a single page of the outstanding bugs for a given package, so that I can have a link to "http://www.debian.org/bugs/bypackage/nvi.html"; or some such. Or maybe a form, so that somebody can enter a package name and get the appropriate list. I think this would make it much more likely that people would look to see if a bug has been reported before submitting a new one, and would make it easier for maintainers. (I have no idea how hard this would be; I'm just throwing the idea out there...) Steve [1] I enjoy contributing in a small way to a community (both Debian and the free software community in general) that has provided a lot of benefit for me over the years, but the reality is that Debian is a spare time thing for me, and I haven't had much spare time this year. -- The Mole - I think, therefore I scream "Calling all units! Leading monster stampede through the bottomlands to lower forty!... Set up ambush on flanks!... Also, do not shoot me!... Repeat!... Do not shoot me!!!" [FLAMING CARROT vs the Giant Japanese Monsters!]
