Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
Jim Ault wrote: It would be nice if there was a wiki that would categorize bugs (text-in-fields, icons, standalones, Win32 vs Mac) that would read more like a book or simple outline. You mean, like http://revdocwiki.wikispaces.com/ ? Jerry Muelver ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
On 2/25/06, David Vaughan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 25/02/2006, Garrett Hylltun [EMAIL PROTECTED] and Gregory Lypny [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote stuff. Sorry to others for some repetitious elements in here but I see a couple of basic themes in the offerings from Garrett and Gregory (principally the former) which I wish to answer. Hear, hear! What a splendid email. I agree 100%. And this is where the bug voting comes into play. As someone mentioned earlier in this debate, it is possible to find and report a bug so trivial or so easy to bypass, that the interest in fixing it is zero. On the other hand, I find bugs that are important to me, and I see someone else has reported it earlier. I still like to be able to log the fact that this is important to me, even if I can't be the original reporter. Yet, every now and then, I see a window appear on my machine. It says: Would you like to report this problem to Apple? Yes, and if it appears for Safari or any other Apple app, that's fine and I send off the report, but if it's Photoshop or something else, I see no point in sending the report to Apple, but I have no way of logging the problem with the actual developer. To digress slightly, I think the reason Rev appears to have so many bugs is because it is so versatile. We all use Rev in different ways to do widely different projects. I ignore some bugs because I never do the things they refer to. Others find the same bugs to be project blockers. Then again, some people use Rev in a way that the development team never imagined. That's great, but it means they will be the first to strike bugs in those areas. By comparison, testing a single-use application like a word-processor should be simple, but they still crash :-) I wonder is the Rev team doing itself a disservice by letting all Rev users access the bug reports? While most people seem to value the chance to point out problems and influence future versions, some people regard a public bug list as an admission of failure. Maybe it would be better to restrict bugzilla to members of the improve-rev list or make it by invitation only. Just a few random thoughts, Sarah ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
Dan, et al: Voting says This is my relative (among outstanding bugs) priority for fixing the bug. Consider voting as contributing to a proposed budget for RRLtd's RD + Support: RRLtd gives you the opportunity to distribute $100 [ie 100 votes] among all the outstanding bug reports and enhancement requests, with the proviso that you could not allocate more than $5 [votes] to any single item. RRLtd then distributes all the unallocated $ [votes] however it sees fit. Like government, the larger the proportion of those voting, the greater the influence of the vote on the vote takers. Like government, your criticism carries less validity if you don't vote. So vote early and often! Rob Cozens CCW, Serendipity Software Company And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three; Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee. from The Triple Foole by John Donne (1572-1631) ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
Since I started this conversation, I figured i ought to jump back in. In no way do I think Rev should do way with Bugzilla. Publicly disclosing bugs is useful. And it lends an air of credibility to one's products that is hard to attain any other way. Getting the community's input on what bugs are most important to fix is also a wonderful idea and one that I'm sure informs RR's decisions about where to spend Euros on updates. I would not want them to suspend this operation. That said, I still think Bugzilla is too uninformative, too difficult to use, and too obscure in the community to be as useful as it well could be. For openers, I'd like to see the Bugzilla database get more visibility somehow. Perhaps on the RR site there could be a link to a listing of the top 20 or 25 or 50 or whatever bugs. (Of course, that might not be as positive for marketing as I'd like to see!) Maybe there could be a mailing list on bugs and feature requests that could be a broadcast list to which one could subscribe and which would provide regular updates and lists. I don't know. Somewhere there's a way to approach this. I use RevZilla to manage my interaction with Bugzilla and I just discovered today that if you look at voting, you can get a list of all bugs with 1 or more votes, ranked in order by how many votes they have. Maybe that could become the source of some more visible way to expose Bugzilla and its contents? On 2/25/06, Rob Cozens [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dan, et al: Voting says This is my relative (among outstanding bugs) priority for fixing the bug. Consider voting as contributing to a proposed budget for RRLtd's RD + Support: RRLtd gives you the opportunity to distribute $100 [ie 100 votes] among all the outstanding bug reports and enhancement requests, with the proviso that you could not allocate more than $5 [votes] to any single item. RRLtd then distributes all the unallocated $ [votes] however it sees fit. Like government, the larger the proportion of those voting, the greater the influence of the vote on the vote takers. Like government, your criticism carries less validity if you don't vote. So vote early and often! Rob Cozens CCW, Serendipity Software Company And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three; Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee. from The Triple Foole by John Donne (1572-1631) ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution -- ~~ Dan Shafer, Information Product Consultant and Author http://www.shafermedia.com Get my book, Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought From http://www.shafermediastore.com/tech_main.html ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
On 26/02/2006, at 0:50, Sarah Reichelt [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snip To digress slightly, I think the reason Rev appears to have so many bugs is because it is so versatile. We all use Rev in different ways to do widely different projects. I ignore some bugs because I never do the things they refer to. Others find the same bugs to be project blockers. Then again, some people use Rev in a way that the development team never imagined. That's great, but it means they will be the first to strike bugs in those areas. By comparison, testing a single-use application like a word-processor should be simple, but they still crash :-) Very true. Rev is a complex application. The productive efficiency of writing it in itself, as it were, should not fool anyone into believing otherwise. I wonder is the Rev team doing itself a disservice by letting all Rev users access the bug reports? While most people seem to value the chance to point out problems and influence future versions, some people regard a public bug list as an admission of failure. Maybe it would be better to restrict bugzilla to members of the improve-rev list or make it by invitation only. Perhaps rather than restricting it by fiat, RR could make access to the bug list voluntary, just as it allows switching on access to this list or doing so in digest or e-mail form. If you sign up then you also receive notifications of changes to the bug list [optionally Selected or All], the intention being to keep you actively involved while you continue your interest but shutting the list off from casual access. Sign-up would also be a moderated event. Thus, engage those who are interested (and allow them more votes) with full information available, still open in principle to anyone. Meanwhile, Rev could also provide a Problem report option under the Help menu where you did not have access directly to the bug list but had the opportunity to enter a problem, rate it on its own (with reasons), and have some lookup of related problems (based on selected category or on key terms) so that the user could also say their problem is the same as or like or unlike others which from their terms appear to be related. Thus, serious simplification with information concealment while still allowing free report. My general idea is to retain for all the ability to report to the real list even if that list remains behind the scenes, allow the simplest and easiest access for anyone to do so, and to engage more effectively by interaction the users motivated to provide comparative voting rather than one-off voting. Give me some critique and I will try making an enhancement proposal. These are speculative thoughts on my part. Just a few random thoughts, Sarah regards David ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
Here, here! I agree wholeheartedly, Rob. I mean, y'all know that I have and will likely continue to do more than my own fair share of kvetching... But I also have to say that I have seen responsiveness on most if not all of the issues I kvetch about most: *Reasonable hobbyist/IU/educational pricing *Improved docs (still want to see printed ones) including user guide *pre-builts/templates (tho' I HATE templates in general, it's still probably an improvement -- one that I'm willing to spend my students' own money on, that is... he he!) I'll still stand tall on my language purist soapbox, however... I mean, why can't TTS just use HC's speak syntax instead of that dreadful whatever thing it uses??? Lingo went to c.dot.syntax.hell in a very short fashion... Please don't let Transcript follow behind Lingo! Judy On Thu, 23 Feb 2006, Rob Cozens wrote: What is the world coming to when users complain when the company that provides them a product gives them input in determining where resources should be spent on maintaining and updating that product? Runtime Revolution Ltd. gives every user of its product an opportunity to influence the decision on how limited RD and Support resources are allocated. I doubt that you can name many other products you use whose manufacturer give you that same opportunity. Is there some better means of making that determination than asking the people who use the product? Market survey? Ouija Board? Especially a product like RunRev, which appeals to such a broad range of uses and users. Given the documented errors and enhancement requests, how does one decide where to focus time and resources. If each RR user complied a personal bug fix/enhancement request list, to what degree would those lists overlap? How many users would prefer my list to yours, and vice versa? If you were in charge of RR development, wouldn't you like to spend your resources on areas of relatively high importance to a relatively large proportion of users? How do you ascertain that without asking users? ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
Lingo went to c.dot.syntax.hell in a very short fashion... Please don't let Transcript follow behind Lingo! I'm sure I wouldn't want to ask RR to make Rev use dot notation - but it's a nice way to work when you are used to it. ;-) Scott ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
Garrett: This is not about influencing the direction of the product. This is about how bug reports should be directly given to the company, the company should track it internally and insure that it's taken care of. Users should not have to do anything else, that's why they pay Runtime for the product. RR bug reports are directly given to the company by posting a report in the Bugzilla database... preferably after checking to see if the problem has been previously reported. The information recorded [except votes] is the same information that would be asked of you if you were reporting the problem via telephone. RRLtd and any interested users can track bugs internally by querying BZ. Once a problem is reported, one does not _have_ to do anything else. I believe the crux of your issue is the insure that it's taken care of, and I suggest that has little to do with the way it's reported and tracked. How do you suppose RRLtd would process bug reports submitted by telephone? Don't you imagine the Tech Support person taking the call would enter the information in a bug database like BZ? So unless you take issue with going online and reporting a bug to BZ instead of taking up the time of someone who could be fixing bugs but instead must sit on the phone and ask you to relate the information, or take issue with the fact that users as well as RRLtd staff can track the information, I don't see BZ as the culprit. I get the feeling that you are taken back by the number of items on the BZ bug list and the amount of time some items remain unresolved. Based on my thirty year's experience in the field, I suggest that there is NO bug-free application of any scope or complexity on the market today. When I ran DG Minis for Oakland Police Department, I would receive monthly a 350+ page book listing all known bugs in Data General software. Those bugs did not prevent us from performing our daily dp tasks. Most companies keep their bug lists internal, but virtually all companies have them. The philosophy of the original owners of FlexWare was we won't make our bug list public because people will think our product is no good (and perhaps Dan and others' panning of BZ may prove their point). What I saw was people responding what's the matter with the people at Flexware that they don't know about this problem when they crashed the system doing something they wouldn't have done if they had been warned on a bug list. Counting bugs gives one little indication of the overall quality of the product without taking into account their nature and severity. How many the rectangle graphic is rendered one pixel short on XP systems when the width is odd bugs equate to one Rev 2.7.1 crashes in Win XP when I copy to the Clipboard bug? How many bugs in BZ are of the former type? How many are the latter? I think you need to know this before you can make quality judgments of Revolution based on the number of entries in Bugzilla. Rob Cozens CCW, Serendipity Software Company And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three; Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee. from The Triple Foole by John Donne (1572-1631) ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
Hello Tom, Actually, I couldn't make a balance sheet balance for the life of me (no offence to any accountants on this list), but I do appreciate your thoughtful analogy. It falls short of our Bugzilla deal, though. Accountants receive disparate (not desperate; that would be Nortel and Enrol) audit and tax preparation jobs from clients whose businesses and accounting practices the accounting firm often knows little about (and sometimes the clients know little about as well). Not so with Runtime Revolution. The Revolution team built it, maintains it, and we use it; and my understanding is that the program itself is a series of stacks and is based on HyperTalk (or whatever the language is called). So, receiving a stream of e-mails with bug reports should be quite informative for the Revolution team. Same bug pops up in a lot of subject headers tells the team that there's a problem affecting a lot of users, and it's a big enough of an annoyance to get those users to write in about it. The Revolution team then has to use its judgement about prioritizing the fixes. They know enough about the program to do that, and there's nothing about Bugzilla, as far as I see, that helps them do their job better. Regards, Gregory On Fri, Feb 24, 2006, at 10:10 AM, Thomas McGrath III: Dear Gregory, That would be like a few hundred people bringing an accountant hundreds of boxes of receipts from the past three years (some taxable and some not along with every bill too) and saying there was no real need for any kind of user contributed record keeping or for that matter questions and answers about their own expenses and then all of them at once saying But where's my REFUND I want it now, why didn't you prepare mine first, how come you did theirs first etc. (Just to keep it real and since you are an Associate Professor of Finance I thought the analogy would be close your heart) Regards, Tom On Feb 23, 2006, at 7:38 PM, Gregory Lypny wrote: Well put, Dan. But I don't see the point of Bugzilla at all. Seems to me that all bugs, big and small, should to be fixed, and a simple word to the Revolution people ought to be enough to get the ball rolling. Gregory Lypny Associate Professor of Finance John Molson School of Business Concordia University Montreal, Canada ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
Garrett. I've spent the better part of my adult life in the software biz and I think your reaction here was really, really extreme. You said: You don't release products if you know it still contains bugs! You don't upgrade your product unless the upgrade fixes all the prior bugs. I don't know if I've *ever* released a piece of bug-free software. In fact, there is some theoretical support for the argument that there's no such thing as bug-free software, only software whose bugs have not yet been discovered by a user. A product as complex as Revolution is bound to have bugs forever. The issue is whether there are bugs that: (a) prevent the product from being usable for which (b) there are no workarounds. I am willing to pay for upgrades and updates as long as great progress is made toward fixing the blocker bugs at the same time. Otherwise, the economic incentive to fix bugs goes away. And just FWIW, I don't think Rev's pricing is outrageous at all. Given what it allows me to accomplish, Rev is if anything underpriced. But don't tell them that, OK? ~~ Dan Shafer, Information Product Consultant and Author http://www.shafermedia.com Get my book, Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought From http://www.shafermediastore.com/tech_main.html ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
Rob Fair enough. I hadn't considered that scenario. I stand corrected. On 2/23/06, Rob Cozens [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dan, et al: If I create a new bug entry in Bugzilla, it would not even occur to me to vote for it. By posting it and giving it a rating, I think I *am* voting on it. I find posting and voting have totally different purposes. Example: The last item I posted to BZ had to do with rectangle graphics not being rendered correctly on Win XP when their width was an odd number. I had already changed my rectangle graphics to even pixel widths, and could care less if the bug is ever fixed. My post was to alert the Run Rev Team and other developers that it exists. So posting simply says I found what I believe is a bug. Rating says This is my estimate of the severity of the bug Voting says This is my relative (among outstanding bugs) priority for fixing the bug. I can see your point that assigning a rating while posting implies a priority; but I'm not sure how that rating can be used to derive a relative priority among all outstanding items. Rob Cozens CCW, Serendipity Software Company And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three; Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee. from The Triple Foole by John Donne (1572-1631) ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution -- ~~ Dan Shafer, Information Product Consultant and Author http://www.shafermedia.com Get my book, Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought From http://www.shafermediastore.com/tech_main.html ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
Well that figures, but hey what's a good discussion without a few analogies, even wrong ones. Regards, Tom On Feb 24, 2006, at 2:11 PM, Gregory Lypny wrote: Hello Tom, Actually, I couldn't make a balance sheet balance for the life of me (no offence to any accountants on this list), but I do appreciate your thoughtful analogy. It falls short of our Bugzilla deal, though. Thomas J McGrath III [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lazy River Software™ - http://www.lazyriversoftware.com Lazy River Metal Art™ - http://www.lazyriversoftware.com/metal.html Meeting Wear™ - http://www.cafepress.com/meetingwear Semantic Compaction Systems - http://www.minspeak.com SCIconics, LLC - http://www.sciconics.com/sciindex.html ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
On 25/02/2006, Garrett Hylltun [EMAIL PROTECTED] and Gregory Lypny [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote stuff. Sorry to others for some repetitious elements in here but I see a couple of basic themes in the offerings from Garrett and Gregory (principally the former) which I wish to answer. My credentials for so doing include not only the usual geological ages in and around software but particularly more than ten years spent observing or intervening in large scale projects which were off the rails and subject to commercial dispute, always involving millions to tens of millions of dollars. Problem management is, more or less, how I make my living. I also designed quality assurance facilities for a couple of government departments, one carrying a 2000-strong IT workforce and another doing highly critical defence work. The relevance of that is a high level of familiarity with what constitutes a faulty product to different people and how users' requirements are obtained, interpreted and implemented. I understand Garrett to be saying that all bugs should be fixed and that the order of their repair is immaterial given the first assumption. His dissatisfaction with the failure of this desirable outcome is exacerbated by the perceived high price of the product. However, Garrett fails to define a bug and there immediately is a massive problem. One person's bug is another person's feature request, a third person's could not care less and as often than not is unrelated to the software in question anyway (false report). This is unavoidable and and automatically renders any fix all bugs request as, well, just plain silly. I apologise for any personal offence anyone might take from that because I mean none, but there is really no other description for it. There will always be a range of items where their bug status is legitimately moot, so where do you draw the line? That is a matter of commercial dispute, of priority against demand and resources, of adequate bug definition and ultimately of agreement about where effort is most productively invested so that *both* parties are commercially successful. The inexhaustible and infallible Alpha and Beta testing teams you seek do not exist outside the halls of Valhalla [or insert preferred paradise] and even there they are driven to drinking and argument. Incidentally, Gregory, the same bug will not, alas, appear in headers without human intervention and interpretation of the myriad descriptions, many of them fairly incompetent, of the potential bug. For decades we have been grabbing developers and banging their heads against brick walls and steel pillars screaming What about the customer's business needs! So, how is it that RR will make all decisions on criticality of those bugs of which they are aware and which they choose to define as bugs? Their problem is not that they are too customer-driven with BZ, it is contrarily that it is damned hard to get some decent customer input. Even Dan, who is as experienced as anyone, confesses that he does not get motivated to use Bugzilla. Criticality, or priority, does matter. In a bank, if there were a bug which even in rare circumstances created an incorrect transaction then there would be a fix and release before virtually any other bug were managed in that software. Far from denigrating RR for exposing their bug data to entry and voting, we should be applauding their sound system and devising ways of making it more acceptable to users (as attempted by RZ). One of the most reliable pieces of large scale software I know is OS/ 390 or z/OS in its current incarnation. It hosts a myriad of the most critical commercial and defence systems around the world. How much money would you like to lay down, Garrett, that its bug list has zero length? Or that every one on the list is always fixed by the next release, or that customers pay no licence fee to obtain fixes? It is a waste of time even to imagine it, or to borrow words from your own blog, it is not science, it is nothing but pure religion. Finally, the cost issue is not worth debating too much except for a couple of observations. My daughter is currently in Edinburgh and reports no stream of Ferrari Enzos racing about the Scottish hills while the RR office lies silent but for the flickering stream of bug reports. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, however, have no problem affording such fripperies should they wish it, for they charge hundreds of dollars for software sold to millions or tens of millions, not to thousands. Yet, every now and then, I see a window appear on my machine. It says: Would you like to report this problem to Apple? regards David Director DVK Consult Pty Ltd ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription
On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
In another thread, Sarah Reichelt made the following observations about Bugzilla in response to Xavier's complaints about stability of 2.7 on WinXP: I have looked at your list of reported bugs in Bugzilla. I find 126 unfixed bugs reported by you (though some seem to be duplicates) however only 4 of them have any votes. Of those 4, 1 is rated as trivial, 2 as minor and only 1 as major. None of your bugs has been sufficiently important to get ANY votes from you. If you do not attach much importance to them and no-one else has felt them to be relevant enough for a vote, then the Rev development team probably thinks there are more important issues to concentrate on. This provided me with an opportunity to say something I've been meaning to say for some time but never had a trigger for. While I am absolutely certain that RR doesn't rely solely or even primarily on Bugzilla to set its bug-fixing agenda, I am equally sure they do take it into account. And that's a shame because the reality is that the number of people who use Rev regularly who: (a) are aware of Bugzilla and its purpose; (b) have purused the bug list in an effort to ferret out those that are most important to them and apply votes to them; and (c) monitor it on an ongoing basis so they know which bugs are being fixed and therefore where they can reapply their votes is minuscule. I don't do that. I'm not sure how many others do. If I create a new bug entry in Bugzilla, it would not even occur to me to vote for it. By posting it and giving it a rating, I think I *am* voting on it. Particularly given that I have a limited number of points to allocate among bugs, I have to be judicious. (Until a few months ago, I didn't even know I could change my votes around even though it's perfectly clear from a close examination of the program that you can do that.) So I don't think the status of bugs in Bugzilla is an adequate representation of the state of the product. I'm sure there are a ton of suspected bugs that their discoverers never file because: (a) they're not really sure they're bugs and confirming that would take too much time; (b) they don't find Bugzilla a very welcoming environment in which to post bugs (even with the wonderful Revzilla around to take away a lot of the pain); and/or (c) they don't think about it. I'd be all for making Bugzilla far more useful. I even have some ideas for how to do that. But frankly that's up to RunRev, not the community, and my guess is that they have enough To Do Lists that they don't need any more ideas from me! -- ~~ Dan Shafer, Information Product Consultant and Author http://www.shafermedia.com Get my book, Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought From http://www.shafermediastore.com/tech_main.html ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
On 2/23/06 11:07 AM, Dan Shafer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'd be all for making Bugzilla far more useful. I even have some ideas for how to do that. But frankly that's up to RunRev, not the community, and my guess is that they have enough To Do Lists that they don't need any more ideas from me! Time, effort. I don't use Bug or Revzilla. My category is not 'developer' or 'exorcist' since I only do my own tools in a limited way to achieve a profitable(?) result. No time to complete the due diligence to 'recipe' a bug report, especially since it is probably already reported. I will very likely never know enough about Rev to do a good bug report. I would most likely not use the correct term to do a search to find all bugs related to groups-management anyway. It would be nice if there was a wiki that would categorize bugs (text-in-fields, icons, standalones, Win32 vs Mac) that would read more like a book or simple outline. Anyway, hearing about them on the list is the only way I really come in contact with them, so I agree with Dan, Bugzilla is not useful for me. Don't have a good solution, but did have time to vote on this issue by typing this email. Jim Ault Las Vegas On 2/23/06 11:07 AM, Dan Shafer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In another thread, Sarah Reichelt made the following observations about Bugzilla in response to Xavier's complaints about stability of 2.7 on WinXP: I have looked at your list of reported bugs in Bugzilla. I find 126 unfixed bugs reported by you (though some seem to be duplicates) however only 4 of them have any votes. Of those 4, 1 is rated as trivial, 2 as minor and only 1 as major. None of your bugs has been sufficiently important to get ANY votes from you. If you do not attach much importance to them and no-one else has felt them to be relevant enough for a vote, then the Rev development team probably thinks there are more important issues to concentrate on. This provided me with an opportunity to say something I've been meaning to say for some time but never had a trigger for. While I am absolutely certain that RR doesn't rely solely or even primarily on Bugzilla to set its bug-fixing agenda, I am equally sure they do take it into account. And that's a shame because the reality is that the number of people who use Rev regularly who: (a) are aware of Bugzilla and its purpose; (b) have purused the bug list in an effort to ferret out those that are most important to them and apply votes to them; and (c) monitor it on an ongoing basis so they know which bugs are being fixed and therefore where they can reapply their votes is minuscule. I don't do that. I'm not sure how many others do. If I create a new bug entry in Bugzilla, it would not even occur to me to vote for it. By posting it and giving it a rating, I think I *am* voting on it. Particularly given that I have a limited number of points to allocate among bugs, I have to be judicious. (Until a few months ago, I didn't even know I could change my votes around even though it's perfectly clear from a close examination of the program that you can do that.) So I don't think the status of bugs in Bugzilla is an adequate representation of the state of the product. I'm sure there are a ton of suspected bugs that their discoverers never file because: (a) they're not really sure they're bugs and confirming that would take too much time; (b) they don't find Bugzilla a very welcoming environment in which to post bugs (even with the wonderful Revzilla around to take away a lot of the pain); and/or (c) they don't think about it. I'd be all for making Bugzilla far more useful. I even have some ideas for how to do that. But frankly that's up to RunRev, not the community, and my guess is that they have enough To Do Lists that they don't need any more ideas from me! -- ~~ Dan Shafer, Information Product Consultant and Author http://www.shafermedia.com Get my book, Revolution: Software at the Speed of Thought From http://www.shafermediastore.com/tech_main.html ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
I would also like to point out that 2.7 no longer contains a link to Bugzilla. The support option in Help (on Windows) goes to http://support.runrev.com/ which does not have a link to http://support.runrev.com/bugzilla/, so there isn't even a good way to get to bugzilla without using the plug-in, or having book-marked the URL, or simply remembering the URL. It seems that there is no way for a new user to know about Bugzilla, unless they ask. Or am I missing something? Peter T. Evensen http://www.PetersRoadToHealth.com 314-629-5248 or 888-628-4588 ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
On Feb 23, 2006, at 11:07 AM, Dan Shafer wrote: This provided me with an opportunity to say something I've been meaning to say for some time but never had a trigger for. Ditto! Ok, so I spent all this money for Rev, and I would expect that any bug report sent to them would be taken seriously and that it would be actively followed up by the company. I can understand setting priorities depending on the severity of the bug, but having the users rate and vote? I thought I was purchasing a product, not getting married to a second wife! Bugzilla seems like it relies far too much on the users and not enough on the company. Users should not have to do such things, especially after spending this much money on the product. It's almost absurd, more so if just because a bug is not rated hight or voted on by anyone else, then is that to say that it may get completely ignored? So it seems this is the scenario; Pay hefty price for Rev, pay hefty price for updates?!/upgrades, Pay heavy for extras, and make the users who paid for the product work for you by making them search out all the bugs, post them for you, rate them for you, vote on them for you, follow up on them for you. To quote Jubel Early, a not so famous bounty hunter from a not so famous TV series that's long since been canceled... Does that seem right to you? I can understand the hefty base price of the product, I can't agree with having to pay for damned updates! where fixes that they should be responsible for should be taken care of by them. I can understand a small fee for upgrades, but not the amount they are asking for. But what upsets me the most is depending on the paying customers to help them track down bugs! What the hell are they doing with the money? And what the hell are they doing releasing a product that is already known to have bugs still in it! They should be paying testers for this and not raping the paying customers for this work. With the prices they are charging for everything, we shouldn't even be having this conversation at all! If a user finds a bug, he/she should be able to simply report the bug to Rev either via email or a bug report form on their site, and they should take care of everything from there! That bug should be gone by the next update of the product. I'm sorry for being a bit over the edge, but I've been in this business myself, and this really makes me mad. You don't release products if you know it still contains bugs! You don't upgrade your product unless the upgrade fixes all the prior bugs. Updates are to fix bugs and issues that you didn't catch earlier, that somehow got past your beta testing team, and updates are free since you're fixing your own mistakes, not mistakes of the customer. Upgrades are not like going from 1.1 to 1.2, but from 1.x to 2.x Upgrades are when the product has had some major changes done to it, improvements and new features over the previous version. I'm really starting to regret my purchasing Rev now. I'm feeling like I've been ripped off. Rev is a nice product, but if this is how the company is going to operate, then I'm not going to be updating/ upgrading. And I doubt that Rev is going to change their business practice since it seems so many people tolerate it and continue to give them money for releasing a product that will always have bugs in it. Runtime... Stop charging for updates! Fix all the bugs and release an update, then work on an upgrade when all the bugs are fixed. Go ahead and charge for upgrades. Dump the 'zilla stuff and setup your own internal bug tracking system so you guys can take care of this and leave the customers out of the process. Beat the crap out of your beta testing team for allowing all this stuff to get through to the customers. Sorry to everyone else for my angry post to the mailing list. If a hand slapping is due to me for this, I'll gladly take it as I should. Best regards, -Garrett ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
No comment about how you should be slapped. I do think that using the bug reporting is an optional thing and that you are not required to do so and that REV does not 'rely' on it as much as giving the users a voice in it. I wish Office would do this or Adobe. Tom On Feb 23, 2006, at 3:13 PM, Garrett Hylltun wrote: On Feb 23, 2006, at 11:07 AM, Dan Shafer wrote: This provided me with an opportunity to say something I've been meaning to say for some time but never had a trigger for. Ditto! Ok, so I spent all this money for Rev, and I would expect that any bug report sent to them would be taken seriously and that it would be actively followed up by the company. I can understand setting priorities depending on the severity of the bug, but having the users rate and vote? I thought I was purchasing a product, not getting married to a second wife! Bugzilla seems like it relies far too much on the users and not enough on the company. Users should not have to do such things, especially after spending this much money on the product. It's almost absurd, more so if just because a bug is not rated hight or voted on by anyone else, then is that to say that it may get completely ignored? So it seems this is the scenario; Pay hefty price for Rev, pay hefty price for updates?!/upgrades, Pay heavy for extras, and make the users who paid for the product work for you by making them search out all the bugs, post them for you, rate them for you, vote on them for you, follow up on them for you. To quote Jubel Early, a not so famous bounty hunter from a not so famous TV series that's long since been canceled... Does that seem right to you? I can understand the hefty base price of the product, I can't agree with having to pay for damned updates! where fixes that they should be responsible for should be taken care of by them. I can understand a small fee for upgrades, but not the amount they are asking for. But what upsets me the most is depending on the paying customers to help them track down bugs! What the hell are they doing with the money? And what the hell are they doing releasing a product that is already known to have bugs still in it! They should be paying testers for this and not raping the paying customers for this work. With the prices they are charging for everything, we shouldn't even be having this conversation at all! If a user finds a bug, he/she should be able to simply report the bug to Rev either via email or a bug report form on their site, and they should take care of everything from there! That bug should be gone by the next update of the product. I'm sorry for being a bit over the edge, but I've been in this business myself, and this really makes me mad. You don't release products if you know it still contains bugs! You don't upgrade your product unless the upgrade fixes all the prior bugs. Updates are to fix bugs and issues that you didn't catch earlier, that somehow got past your beta testing team, and updates are free since you're fixing your own mistakes, not mistakes of the customer. Upgrades are not like going from 1.1 to 1.2, but from 1.x to 2.x Upgrades are when the product has had some major changes done to it, improvements and new features over the previous version. I'm really starting to regret my purchasing Rev now. I'm feeling like I've been ripped off. Rev is a nice product, but if this is how the company is going to operate, then I'm not going to be updating/upgrading. And I doubt that Rev is going to change their business practice since it seems so many people tolerate it and continue to give them money for releasing a product that will always have bugs in it. Runtime... Stop charging for updates! Fix all the bugs and release an update, then work on an upgrade when all the bugs are fixed. Go ahead and charge for upgrades. Dump the 'zilla stuff and setup your own internal bug tracking system so you guys can take care of this and leave the customers out of the process. Beat the crap out of your beta testing team for allowing all this stuff to get through to the customers. Sorry to everyone else for my angry post to the mailing list. If a hand slapping is due to me for this, I'll gladly take it as I should. Best regards, -Garrett Thomas J McGrath III [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lazy River Software™ - http://www.lazyriversoftware.com Lazy River Metal Art™ - http://www.lazyriversoftware.com/metal.html Meeting Wear™ - http://www.cafepress.com/meetingwear Semantic Compaction Systems - http://www.minspeak.com SCIconics, LLC - http://www.sciconics.com/sciindex.html ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
Garrett Hylltun wrote: I'm sorry for being a bit over the edge, but I've been in this business myself, and this really makes me mad. You don't release products if you know it still contains bugs! You don't upgrade your product unless the upgrade fixes all the prior bugs. How many known bugs are in OS X? BTW: Nice t-shirt ;) -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
While I am absolutely certain that RR doesn't rely solely or even primarily on Bugzilla to set its bug-fixing agenda, I am equally sure they do take it into account. And that's a shame because the reality is that the number of people who use Rev regularly who: (a) are aware of Bugzilla and its purpose; (b) have purused the bug list in an effort to ferret out those that are most important to them and apply votes to them; and (c) monitor it on an ongoing basis so they know which bugs are being fixed and therefore where they can reapply their votes is minuscule. I don't do that. I'm not sure how many others do. Hi Dan, Its interesting, I was just discussing this with someone else. I think most lists like this are democratic in the tyrrany of the majority sort of way. Its important for Runrev to clear through these, but Bugzilla among many methods used by many companies isnt entirely democratic because the system is geared towards native English speakers who are proactively involved in English. In Paradigma Software, native English speakers are in the minority (as a few people have noticed ;-)), so I run up against this quite often (and that we have a lot of business in various European countries and Japan). Some language based bugs can also be, to varying degrees, almost 100% fatal to sales. Best regards, Lynn Fredricks President Paradigma Software, Inc Joining Worlds of Information Deploy True Client-Server Database Solutions Royalty Free with Valentina Developer Network http://www.paradigmasoft.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
Garrett, Dan, Jim, et al: I can understand setting priorities depending on the severity of the bug, but having the users rate and vote? I thought I was purchasing a product, not getting married to a second wife! Bugzilla seems like it relies far too much on the users and not enough on the company. Users should not have to do such things, especially after spending this much money on the product. It's almost absurd, more so if just because a bug is not rated hight or voted on by anyone else, then is that to say that it may get completely ignored? What is the world coming to when users complain when the company that provides them a product gives them input in determining where resources should be spent on maintaining and updating that product? Runtime Revolution Ltd. gives every user of its product an opportunity to influence the decision on how limited RD and Support resources are allocated. I doubt that you can name many other products you use whose manufacturer give you that same opportunity. Is there some better means of making that determination than asking the people who use the product? Market survey? Ouija Board? Especially a product like RunRev, which appeals to such a broad range of uses and users. Given the documented errors and enhancement requests, how does one decide where to focus time and resources. If each RR user complied a personal bug fix/enhancement request list, to what degree would those lists overlap? How many users would prefer my list to yours, and vice versa? If you were in charge of RR development, wouldn't you like to spend your resources on areas of relatively high importance to a relatively large proportion of users? How do you ascertain that without asking users? Jim begins I don't use Bug or Revzilla. and ends Bugzilla is not useful for me. Dan writes I'd be all for making Bugzilla far more useful. I even have some ideas for how to do that. But frankly that's up to RunRev, not the community, I see it the other way around. RR has offered its user community an opportunity to influence resource allocation and bug tracking; but it can't work without the participation of that user community. Rob Cozens CCW, Serendipity Software Company And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three; Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee. from The Triple Foole by John Donne (1572-1631) ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
Garrett Hylltun wrote: On Feb 23, 2006, at 11:07 AM, Dan Shafer wrote: This provided me with an opportunity to say something I've been meaning to say for some time but never had a trigger for. Ditto! Yeah - I tried to respond to Sarah's email saying more or less the same thing, but just couldn't express myself well enough, so never sent it. I think the bug-voting system should never be more than a tiny hint to the people setting priorities within RunRev. snip But what upsets me the most is depending on the paying customers to help them track down bugs! What the hell are they doing with the money? And what the hell are they doing releasing a product that is already known to have bugs still in it! They should be paying testers for this and not raping the paying customers for this work. With the prices they are charging for everything, we shouldn't even be having this conversation at all! If a user finds a bug, he/she should be able to simply report the bug to Rev either via email or a bug report form on their site, and they should take care of everything from there! That bug should be gone by the next update of the product. I think it's impractical to say that all known bugs will be fixed. Not all can be reproduced reliably, bugs reported late in the day can't be fixed without delaying the release, some bugs are unimportant and can reasonably be left until other work is to be done in that area of the code, etc. And more importantly, there is plenty of evidence that people buying software will prefer software with new features and some bugs over software that is bug-free but lacking features. So too strict a fix all bugs policy is a sure way to fail to attract customers (as is too strong a tendency to add features without fixing bugs). Small products can hope to achieve this, large ones can't. RR needs to strike a balance; and while I think they are not getting it quite right, I can't say that they're getting it all wrong either. I'm sorry for being a bit over the edge, but I've been in this business myself, and this really makes me mad. You don't release products if you know it still contains bugs! You don't upgrade your product unless the upgrade fixes all the prior bugs. Updates are to fix bugs and issues that you didn't catch earlier, that somehow got past your beta testing team, and updates are free since you're fixing your own mistakes, not mistakes of the customer. Upgrades are not like going from 1.1 to 1.2, but from 1.x to 2.x Upgrades are when the product has had some major changes done to it, improvements and new features over the previous version. I'm really starting to regret my purchasing Rev now. I'm feeling like I've been ripped off. Rev is a nice product, but if this is how the company is going to operate, then I'm not going to be updating/ upgrading. And I doubt that Rev is going to change their business practice since it seems so many people tolerate it and continue to give them money for releasing a product that will always have bugs in it. Runtime... Stop charging for updates! Fix all the bugs and release an update, then work on an upgrade when all the bugs are fixed. Go ahead and charge for upgrades. I think each release I've seen (only been 18 months) has been a mix of bug-fixing and new features, which is the way I think it should be. I'd like to see more clarity on this (e.g. a list of BZ numbers fixed in the release). But I do believe that each release has had enough features to justify an upgrade fee. While I do find the on-going cost a bit high, that's a business decision that RR needs to make (and which I knew about when I got involved). Dump the 'zilla stuff and setup your own internal bug tracking system so you guys can take care of this and leave the customers out of the process. Beat the crap out of your beta testing team for allowing all this stuff to get through to the customers. I strongly disagree with some of this. I think that keeping the reported bug list public is very much the right thing to do. While it can be an aim to find bugs internally or in Beta testing, it will never completely succeed; customers will find bugs, and it's important that there is a process that allows them to report those, track the progress against their reports, and see when the problems are fixed. If some other customer (or even internal user) has found a bug, then I want to get the benefit of that knowledge. If there is a workaround, or even just a more precise description of the problem, then it can be very useful to me. Some bug entries in BZ include discussion or clarification from the RR team which is very useful. I think RR could do with doing a serious review of the outstanding bug list. I suspect that 20% of the open bugs could be simply dismissed (as cannot reproduce and unless there is further input are not going to be looked
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
Well put, Dan. But I don't see the point of Bugzilla at all. Seems to me that all bugs, big and small, should to be fixed, and a simple word to the Revolution people ought to be enough to get the ball rolling. Gregory Lypny Associate Professor of Finance John Molson School of Business Concordia University Montreal, Canada ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
Dear Gregory, That would be like a few hundred people bringing an accountant hundreds of boxes of receipts from the past three years (some taxable and some not along with every bill too) and saying there was no real need for any kind of user contributed record keeping or for that matter questions and answers about their own expenses and then all of them at once saying But where's my REFUND I want it now, why didn't you prepare mine first, how come you did theirs first etc. (Just to keep it real and since you are an Associate Professor of Finance I thought the analogy would be close your heart) Regards, Tom On Feb 23, 2006, at 7:38 PM, Gregory Lypny wrote: Well put, Dan. But I don't see the point of Bugzilla at all. Seems to me that all bugs, big and small, should to be fixed, and a simple word to the Revolution people ought to be enough to get the ball rolling. Gregory Lypny Associate Professor of Finance John Molson School of Business Concordia University Montreal, Canada ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution Thomas J McGrath III [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lazy River Software™ - http://www.lazyriversoftware.com Lazy River Metal Art™ - http://www.lazyriversoftware.com/metal.html Meeting Wear™ - http://www.cafepress.com/meetingwear Semantic Compaction Systems - http://www.minspeak.com SCIconics, LLC - http://www.sciconics.com/sciindex.html ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
And it seems to me that all problems in the world, big and small, should be fixed, and a simple word to the Whitehouse people should be enough to get the ball rolling. :) Mark On 24 Feb 2006, at 00:38, Gregory Lypny wrote: Seems to me that all bugs, big and small, should to be fixed, and a simple word to the Revolution people ought to be enough to get the ball rolling. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
On Feb 23, 2006, at 3:04 PM, Rob Cozens wrote: Garrett, Dan, Jim, et al: [snip] What is the world coming to when users complain when the company that provides them a product gives them input in determining where resources should be spent on maintaining and updating that product? Aiding in the direction of the product is one thing. Runtime Revolution Ltd. gives every user of its product an opportunity to influence the decision on how limited RD and Support resources are allocated. This is something I don't understand. You say limited RD which I don't see. Not with the prices of the products being offered. I've seen smaller companies with products under 100 USD handle these things far better. If Runtime has a problem with finances that they are not capable of handling these issues on their own, then there is something wrong going on within the company. This is not about influencing the direction of the product. This is about how bug reports should be directly given to the company, the company should track it internally and insure that it's taken care of. Users should not have to do anything else, that's why they pay Runtime for the product. I doubt that you can name many other products you use whose manufacturer give you that same opportunity. Visual DialogScript, PureBasic are two that come to mind immediately. I assure you I can probably compile a list of products that far exceed your imagination. But again, you are talking of another animal completely. All companies are happy to listen to their customers with regards to the direction of the product, but none of them ask the customers to help them find their bugs and keep track of them. Even open source and freeware products don't ask of this. Gambas is one that fits here. Is there some better means of making that determination than asking the people who use the product? Market survey? Ouija Board? Again, this is about bugs and how Rev is to take care of them, not the users. Give direction for the product future is a different story. Especially a product like RunRev, which appeals to such a broad range of uses and users. Given the documented errors and enhancement requests, how does one decide where to focus time and resources. If each RR user complied a personal bug fix/enhancement request list, to what degree would those lists overlap? How many users would prefer my list to yours, and vice versa? What good are enhancements if the bugs are not fixed? If you were in charge of RR development, wouldn't you like to spend your resources on areas of relatively high importance to a relatively large proportion of users? How do you ascertain that without asking users? Fixing bugs is highly important! And if I were involved directly with the company, I would have insured that all bugs were taken care of before upgrading the product. I probably would have fired the alpha testing team and the beta testing team, as well as the person who's let the product go to market knowing there were unfixed bugs in it. Jim begins I don't use Bug or Revzilla. and ends Bugzilla is not useful for me. Dan writes I'd be all for making Bugzilla far more useful. I even have some ideas for how to do that. But frankly that's up to RunRev, not the community, Jim shouldn't have to be concerned about any 'zilla. He should be concerned with using his product and being happy with it. I see it the other way around. RR has offered its user community an opportunity to influence resource allocation and bug tracking; but it can't work without the participation of that user community. Something the community really has no business being involved with. That's the job of the company providing the product. If I wanted to be a part of their process, I would have asked for a job there or bought stock in their company or something. I bought a product that I thought was a stable product, something I could use and not have to waste time with following up on a 'zilla system to see what bugs are listed, fixed, ignored, voted on, rated etc. It's absurd that a user would have to deal with this. Taking part in where a company puts forth it's time and resources is up to the company and users shouldn't have to deal with this. I didn't pay hundreds of USD for this! Then I'm expected to pay for bug fixes that I had no hand in creating in the first place? I'll pay for enhancements, but tossing in enhancements in updates is not fair play at all, and asking users to pay for updates that fix the companies own mistakes is just wrong. Upgrades, sure, but not updates. Asking users to be more involved in the bug reporting system is asking too much for such an expensive product. I guess I'm not specifically upset with the bug issue, but with several issues. My views of how things should be are not that of the majority. I can be extreme
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
Dan, et al: If I create a new bug entry in Bugzilla, it would not even occur to me to vote for it. By posting it and giving it a rating, I think I *am* voting on it. I find posting and voting have totally different purposes. Example: The last item I posted to BZ had to do with rectangle graphics not being rendered correctly on Win XP when their width was an odd number. I had already changed my rectangle graphics to even pixel widths, and could care less if the bug is ever fixed. My post was to alert the Run Rev Team and other developers that it exists. So posting simply says I found what I believe is a bug. Rating says This is my estimate of the severity of the bug Voting says This is my relative (among outstanding bugs) priority for fixing the bug. I can see your point that assigning a rating while posting implies a priority; but I'm not sure how that rating can be used to derive a relative priority among all outstanding items. Rob Cozens CCW, Serendipity Software Company And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three; Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee. from The Triple Foole by John Donne (1572-1631) ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
All, RR has offered its user community an opportunity to influence resource allocation and bug tracking; but it can't work without the participation of that user community. Having said that, I must admit I have not done all I could in this regard. I post most bugs as I find them and some enhancement requests as they occur to me. I usually assign votes to my items, and occasionally vote for a specific item when someone brings it up on the List. But I have never sat down, reviewed outstanding items -- at least those in areas of interest--, and allocated most of my votes among them. Until you and I individually commit to do so, the potential of Bugzilla is largely untapped and unknown. Rob Cozens CCW, Serendipity Software Company And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three; Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee. from The Triple Foole by John Donne (1572-1631) ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
Hi Garrett, I guess I'm not specifically upset with the bug issue, but with several issues. My views of how things should be are not that of the majority. I can be extreme in my views about products should be free of bugs and such. And usually you get what you pay for holds true, but I'm feeling cheated here. Typically if you pay hundreds, you get a sold product, and I don't see that now. And I see a company that may or may not have some of it's own internal management and priority issues. While I can understand your frustration I can say - categorically - that in my twenty years plus as a programmer I'm yet to find a development platform that had no bugs - even show stoppers! The reason is simple. Hardware and OS and well as other running software (anti-virus and a plethora of others). Over these years I have come to accept this as the way it is - as do many developers - and that an update to a prior release is usually dispatched after a given period, where as upgrades are less frequent and generally include bug fixes and new elements and in the process start a whole new round of bugs. I'm yet to find a programming platform that has zero bugs. Compared to other cross-platform tools I have used (RealBasic, Kylix and some others) Rev is incredibly stable and the price is right (QT C++ sells for around US $1,200 for the basic package). Cheers Scott ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla
Is there any place where the known XP bugs are available for 2.7? I'd forgotten that I was supposed to be thinking about things my students might encounter, not just those things I would (in OS X), but I had one of the brighter students today showing me wonky Rev stuff in XP. NOTE: I also know that he did multiple wonky (even by my standards) things before he got to the point of showing me his problems, which were too numerous for me to recall. I'm just looking for a quick heads-up... before I gather the gumption to install and run XP in emulation... blech... XP when I don't even have Classic!!! Judy On Thu, 23 Feb 2006, Richard Gaskin wrote: How many known bugs are in OS X? ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
