Re: 11 Questions to answer

[<Jim Gettys hp com>]

> From: Christian Rose <menthos menthos com>
> Date: 24 Nov 2002 23:34:24 +0100
> To: Jim Gettys hp com
> Cc: foundation-list gnome org
> Subject: Re: 11 Questions to answer
> -----
> mån 2002-11-11 klockan 17.54 skrev Jim Gettys hp com:
> > > 1) Why are you running for Board of Directors?
> >
> > I care deeply about the X Window System, and use of it.
> >
> > Despite the great progress of the last several years, I believe that for
> > it and open source software to succeed, Gnome must reach out and work
> > with other projects to solve a number of major remaining problems.
> > Just working within the Gnome community will be insufficient.
>
> Will your work on bringing the GNOME and XFree86 camps to work more
> effectively together also include working on ways for more effective
> communication, problem-solving and bug tracking?

Been trying to; on the communications side, I think there is
decent communications....  So far, despite attempts this summer, I've failed
on the bug tracking side....

>
> My experiences with XFree86 bug reporting have been absolutely
> devastating so far; the XFree86 "bug tracker" currently is an e-mail
> black hole without any feedback or trackability whatsoever. I believe
> that there has to be ways for projects to make sure that those bugs that
> depend upon other projects still are trackable somehow, so that bugs
> don't pile up at one end and rot away while the other end doesn't know
> about it or can do anything about it, which is a rather frustrating
> situation, and which helps noone. In the case of XFree86, having a
> bugzilla.xfree86.org or similar would help a lot, since the current
> state of affairs leaves a lot to be desired.

It would help alot.

I've pushed for this myself (in private mail).


>
> Do you have plans for this? Are you prepared, as part of your work on
> the GNOME board, to act as a bridge between the XFree86 and GNOME
> developers in this way and also make sure the necessary infrastructure
> for inter-project communication and development is in place, such as a
> bugzilla.xfree86.org in this specific example?
>

The current state is that certain key XFree86 core team members
think that bugzilla would be more trouble than it is worth, and fear
a situation in which anyone might enter bug reports without the resources
to do triage on such a database.

They may even be correct given the history, culture and staffing of the
XFree86 project.

My opinion is that things can't/won't change there unless/until the
overall community both makes it clear the current situation is a major
problem, *and* is able/willing to volunteer the effort to keep such
a bugzilla system an advantage rather than a liability.  There has
been some on the former (lots of grousing, by me, and others),
but so far, we don't have committment by people
able and willing to spend the time on the triage end.

Without such triage and management of the bugzilla on an ongoing basis,
I think the XFree86 core team's current consensus is probably correct.

So if people are willing to volunteer to do this work, please let me know;
I'd like to remove objections to progress in this area.
                           - Jim