bugzilla resolutions

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

As of Martin's last status mail, there were 3 different
resolutions for bug reports that basically did not correspond
to a bug in the software:

 WONTFIX
                The problem described is a bug which will never be fixed.
                This should be reserved for "unfixable" things, otherwise
                use INVALID.
 INCOMPLETE / WORKSFORME
                All attempts at reproducing this bug were futile, reading
                the code produces no clues as to why this behavior would
                occur. If more information appears later, please re-assign
                the bug, for now, file it.
 INVALID
                The bug report is invalid for the GNOME Bugtracker. It's
                allowed by policy to set all non-GNOME bugs to INVALID.

There are several problems with this, most of which have been
discussed before:

 - If we rename "WORKSFORME" to "INCOMPLETE", there is no resolution
   for bugs that upon discussion with the submitter, they can't
   reproduce anymore either other than INVALID. (Not that uncommon a
   circumstance.)

 - There is also no resolution for bugs that turn out to be a bug
   that GNOME reveals in 3rd party software other than INVALID.
   (For example, a bug was just closed in GTK+ where a combination
   of a GCC bug and a NetBSD OS bug caused random segfaults in
   GTK+ bug reports.)

 - INVALID is just not a polite way of describing a bug. Imagine
   talking to the bug reporter face to face and telling them
   that there bug report is "invalid" - you, or at least I,
   would not use that word.


My proposal is:

 WONTFIX
                The problem described is a bug which will never be fixed.
                This should be reserved for "unfixable" things, otherwise
                use NOTGNOME or NOTABUG.
 INCOMPLETE
                All attempts at reproducing this bug were futile, reading
                the code produces no clues as to why this behavior would
                occur. If more information appears later, please reopen
                the bug.
 NOTGNOME 
                The bug report describes a problem in software not 
                produced by the GNOME project. It should be reported
                elsewhere. This is also a suitable resolution for bugs
                that appear to have been introduced by someone
                creating a distribution of GNOME.
 NOTABUG
                The bug report describes behavior which is the correct
                behavior of the software or was reported in error.

I think the combination of INCOMPLETE of NOTABUG should allow covering
anything that comes up, and I think the above set is both more
descriptive and polite than WONTFIX/INCOMPLETE/INVALID.


In a related issue, I would strongly suggest we create a status
"NEEDINFO" to put bugs that would end up resolved as INCOMPLETE in
while waiting for more information. (Red Hat Bugzilla has this.)


Finally, I might suggest we follow Red Hat Bugzilla's example and move
away from the ALLCAPS in the interface. Yeah, these are enumerations
internally, but that's no reason to shout.


Does this sound good to people?

Regards,
                                        Owen

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