[Gimp-developer] About closing feature requests as invalid

["Joao S. O. Bueno" <gwidion gmail com>]

As of lately,
new, sometimes simple, feature requests added to bugzilla are being
quickly closed as "invalid", with a short-text inviting the reporter to
discuss the feature here (developer mailing list) rather than
entering then at bugzilla.

This here is an  invitation for us to discuss this policy and set it
as "official" or not.

Personally, I find this to be harmful to the project. I think closing
a feature request
outright as "invalid" is more or less equivalent to slamming a door  in the
face of someone which is otherwise eager to help.

Even if the text always contain "looks a nice idea, let's talk about
it on the mailing list",
the "invalid'", if only for the status name means... "invalid". It is
not a nice word to receive
as an evaluation for what one thinks is a cool idea to the program

Moreover, it is not like we have been talkign about small aditions to
GIMP in this list,
and finding "this is cool, it might go in right now" or "we have to
draft an UI spec to that" (and
_actyually_ have such a draft made.

On the other hand most features I see being posted here have
discussions that fade away
into oblivion after a few replies, if that much.

i agree that the list could be used for that, but it is has not been
the case over the last
few years.


And still, a third point I see as counter-productive with the idea
ofmaking the list
"mandatory" for anyone with a new idea to GIMP: sometimes one may care
even to the
point of detailing an idea, and posting it to bugzilla, but the person
is not (and IMHO, should not)
necessarily be comited to helping GIMP to the point of joining the
development mailing list. So,
the person could simply think "well, I tried to help this program, but
let me go back to my stuff). I'd do just so after filing bug reports
to any other program I just use in a normal basis, and fortunately it
did not happen there - and I am happy some of the ideas or suggestions
I just filled in the respective bug tracker ended up as nice features
instead of having them
"invalidated" because I was not willing to join the development
mailing list of each project.

So, I for one, feel like such requests in bugzilla should be left in
the "New" or "Unconfirmed" state,
with a text inviting the person to discuss it either her or on IRC,
stating that it might never
part from "unconfirmed" otherwise (but also, it could happen -
requests as simple as
having an option to display a Layer's size could be done by any of the
regular contributors
if he felt like it and had the time).

Whatever your (all) position on this, I'd like to state I am against
the policy of simply marking
a bug request as "invalid", when it is not necessarily so,  a couple
of hours/days after it is filled in.

(Ref: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=728493)


  js
 -><-