Dreaming about cooperation with upstream [Was: Re: Upstream error reporting]

[Tomas Mraz]

On Wed, 2008-03-26 at 10:32 +0100, Matej Cepl wrote:
> On 2008-03-25, 18:21 GMT, Nils Philippsen wrote:
> > Well, we already have some information about several upstream 
> > bugzillas (let's keep this simple for the moment and ignore 
> > trac, sourceforge e.a.  bug trackers). In theory it should 
> > simply be a case of asking "Please <link>create a bugzilla 
> > ticket upstream</link>. If you don't have an account at 
> > $upstream_bugzilla, <link>register here</link>." Clicking on 
> > the first link would drop the user into a pre-filled form that 
> > automatically Cc's the Fedora maintainer etc. We could store 
> > the identities at other Bugzillas with the user's account to 
> > make it even smoother. Or maybe something like OpenID can be 
> > used for that.  
> 
> The advantage of my scenario is that our reporters don't need to 
> make yet another useless account in some bugzilla 
> (http://uselessaccount.com/). I had a lot of complaints from our 
> reporters about that -- "I have reported this already, why you 
> guys are so much talking about cooperation, and you are not able 
> to resolve it among yourself." I know there are some reasons, but 
> considering that bug reporters are our most valuable asset (which 
> I believe firmly) we should try most to treat them well.  
> 
> Remember, we are not making them any favor that they have to file 
> a bug against the software we have provided them.
> 
> Especially considering that there ARE possible scenarios how to 
> do it -- and the rest is (IMHO, IAAL, IANAP, etc.) just not that 
> complicated coding.

IMO the reasonable compromise is:
For bugs:
1. the package maintainer should reasonably attempt to reproduce the bug
and/or analyse it whether it is possibly caused by integration changes
which are Fedora specific.
2. a) if he can reproduce or is caused by integration changes - fix it
or report it upstream
   b) if he cannot reproduce it - ask reporter to report it upstream

For enhancement requests:
I'd leave this on package maintainers whether they are interested in the
enhancement enough to help implementing it by reporting upstream and/or
eventually creating a patch and so on.

I don't see any value in package maintainers to be a mediator in a
dialogue between upstream and the bug/enhancement reporter when he as a
mediator wouldn't add anything to the communication. This would be the
case when he cannot reproduce the bug or he isn't interested in the
enhancement.

-- 
Tomas Mraz
No matter how far down the wrong road you've gone, turn back.
                                              Turkish proverb