An interesting read when discussing what to do about our bugs...

[Hans de Goede]

nodata wrote:
> Am Samstag, den 19.01.2008, 13:10 -0500 schrieb seth vidal:
>> On Sat, 2008-01-19 at 19:08 +0100, nodata wrote:
>>
>>> Apart from security bugs, I have never had a bug fixed in Ubuntu, ever.
>>> The tactic seems to be to wait until Debian fix it, or wait until Debian
>>> fix it and then ask you to upgrade to the next release.
>>>
>>> Fedora does a lot better, much better, but probably the most annoying
>>> aspect of using Fedora's bugzilla is the attitude of some of the
>>> maintainers (not all) and the "closing, report upstream" attitude.
>>>
>>> Closing a bug report with "report it upstream" is a let down. It's
>>> repetitive boring work that a computer should be doing.
>>>
>>> It takes a lot of effort to report a bug, and by this I mean that I know
>>> a *lot* of people who find a bug, and maybe a fix, but don't bug report
>>> it. They should be, but I can see why they don't.
>> Hmm, is that what the 'upstream' close reason is for? Normally, I close
>> things 'upstream' when I have checked a fix into the upstream code base.
>> Which seems pretty reasonable time to close it to me.
>>
>> -sv
>>
> 
> I'm talking about closing the bug and telling the reporter to report
> upstream, i.e. "go away".
> 

I agree that the above is bad.

Sometimes (rarely) I do forward a bugreport upstream (using upstream's 
preferred bug tracking mechanism) and then kindly explain that I'm not intimate 
enough with the code to fix the issue at hand with a reasonable effort, point 
them to the upstream bug and add them to the CC there if possible. And then 
close with a resolution of upstream. Not very pretty, but honest and way better 
then letting bugs linger for months.

Regards,

Hans