Have reached a point where I feel p***ed

[Ernest L. Williams Jr.]

On Tue, 2006-10-10 at 15:47 -0400, Mike A. Harris wrote:
> Michael Schwendt wrote:
> > On Thu, 05 Oct 2006 09:12:45 -0500, Rex Dieter wrote:
> > 
> >>> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/197033
> >>>
> >>> It has been enough time to downgrade the driver or request more feedback
> >>> from users who are hit hard by this. But what has happened instead? The
> >>> "bugzilla > /dev/null" syndrom again. Zero interest in avoiding this
> >>> serious regression compared with FC5.
> >>>
> >>> I'm not impressed. Actually, I'm in really bad mood, and that is the
> >>> case seldomly.
> >> Well, for one thing, it's still marked NEEDINFO, so the assignee may not
> >> still be expecting feedback.
> > 
> > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/203570 is still in NEW and doesn't look
> > anything like encouraging either. You want another ticket filed just to
> > see it closed as duplicate? Or is this some kind of educational measure,
> > because Mike Harris wants Fedora X breakage reported upstream? :-}
> 
> The bare fact is, that the majority of bugs in the X server and/or
> video drivers, are bugs in the X.Org codebase as shipped by the
> X.Org foundation.
> 
> Regardless of what one's own personal thoughts/feelings are about
> where they would like to or should file a bug report, it is an
> indisputable fact that reporting a bug in any piece of software
> to the place which will reach the widest possible audience of
> developers who can potentially fix the issue, is going to maximize
> the likelihood of the issue being fixed sooner rather than later.
> 
> That is true no matter what distribution you are using, what the
> particular piece of software is, or which developer maintains that
> software.
> 
> Since developer resources are finite, this fact is all the more
> important.  Even more so when it comes to hardware issues rather
> than general case software issues in random userland software, as
> many hardware related bug reports such as for the kernel and X
> server, quite often will require the person investigating the
> issue to have the exact hardware on hand and be able to reproduce
> it.  That of course assumes that they can justify spending the
> time on a given issue when they take all of their assigned priorities
> into account, which is not always the case.
> 
> I'm being quite open and honest when I say that something has to
> give somewhere.  You either delay an OS release indefinitely
> until your finite manpower can investigate all bugs that are
> reported and fix them, or you ship an OS with many bugs not fixed.
> 
> By having people report issues directly to the source of the problem
> (the upstream projects), it maximizes the eyeballs on the problem,
> both on the developer side, and the people reporting the issue side,
> and vastly increases the likelyhood of an issue getting fixed sooner
> than later.
> 
> Now I fully understand that some people can be greatly frustrated
> when a developer tells them to report the bug they've reported to
> upstream.  I too sometimes feel frustrated when someone has told me
> to do that, so I can fully relate.  But the logic inherent in what
> I've said above holds true even for myself, and so upstream is
> often the best place to report a bug period.
> 
> Now, whether one _wants_ to do that, or things they should _have_
> to do that or not is totally up to the individual.  Nobody has a gun
> to their head.  When a Red Hat engineer asks someone to report an
> issue upstream, they're doing so because they genuinely want to
> see the issue resolved, and they know that by the person reporting
> it upstream the likelihood of that being accomplished increases, thus
> parallelizing development/maintenance and making the software better
> for all users, even those who use other operating system distributions.
> 
> People can debate the merits of this if they like, but you can't get
> 500 miles per gallon out of a 33 mpg vehicle.
> 
> Hope this helps others to understand why developers sometimes ask
> users to report bugs upstream, and that it is done for the good of
> all, even if it is sometimes slightly inconvenient for the one(s)
> reporting the issue in the first place.
Forgive me, if I ask a dumb/newbie question.
What does it mean by upstream?


Thanks,
Ernest



> 
> Take care,
> TTYL
> 
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