closing out old bugs of unmaintained releases

[John Poelstra]

Jesse Keating said the following on 01/05/2008 04:47 AM Pacific Time:
 > On Sat, 05 Jan 2008 13:28:32 +0100
 > Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora at leemhuis.info> wrote:
 >
 >> In fact, something like the above is what I always do and did for my
 >> packages (and had to do, as I'm a package-monkey and no developer).
 >>
 >> IOW: if it's not a packaging bug or otherwise specific to Fedora I
 >> asked the reported to report the bug upstream, as the bug gets fixed
 >> for everyone then -- that includes other distributions and thus is
 >> the best for everyone and avoid double work in our current world with
 >> fivehundred-and-more distributions. If the reported didn't forward the
 >> bug upstream I did it if the bug looked worth forwarding.
 >
 > Except that as a maintainer it's one of your responsibilities to do
 > some of the upstream filing/tracking.
 >

Agreed.

And for someone where Fedora is their first experience with open source 
software it is disheartening and discouraging to go to the trouble to 
file a bug and then be told to that your effort was a waste of time 
because you "should have first searched for that same bug upstream and 
then reported a bug if you couldn't find it there."  We're lucky enough 
that these people ran the gauntlet to get their bug in Fedora bugzilla, 
let alone expect them to figure where "upstream" is and how exactly to 
get there.

This seems a little reminiscent of the old school "go read the man page" 
response that helps and challenges some people, while turning off a 
greater number.  We can't grow a bigger, more vibrant community if we 
dis the people trying to get involved and help.

John