Re: [libreoffice-users] Process

Michael,

No one is upset that a bug almost two years was not resolved.

The file in question appeared to have been dropped (in other words, it
was in the product, and then it wasn't), and we could find no
explanation for why it was dropped, which suggests that somewhere there
is a QA issue,  but that is another problem altogether, isn't it?  We
did our best to document the existence of the file over the course of
various incarnations and branches of the software and waited for some
dev to confirm what we had found and respond to our suggestions.

The frustration arose over the fact that the only documented review of
the bug by anyone other than reporters was "procedural". My comments
regarding passive aggressiveness had to do with the repeated fiddling of
the file without the file getting assigned for any review in a manner
that did not appear in any way to move the process forward. That works
both ways,  and if someone wants respect for moving something forward,
there should likewise be some respect for those documenting the bugs.

As far as your recommendation, "Please don't think that because your bug
is not commented on that it is not considered", I respectfully suggest
that that is just what one should think, in as much as that is what
happens in any tracker I have ever been involved in. The bug gets
assigned to a Dev (I believe this bug never was) and an analysis is done
(and there was no analysis done in that I believe it was never
assigned.) Had it been assigned I am sure the assignee would have
reviewed the comments, looked at the files referenced, and commented in
the bug, addressing priority, issues, etc. I don't think anyone
reporting on the bug was willing to go further until someone from the
Dev team provided some review and guidance, which, of course, was not
forthcoming.

More importantly from a project (engineering, lol) standpoint, however,
a review without comment means that the time reviewed is arguably lost
to the project because there is then no record of the results of that
review. I have dealt in other projects with inconsistent licensing
(using one issue you mention), and when a dev has commented that
licensing needed to be aligned I have addressed that. But there has been
no such analysis documented in this item (again,  arguaby because it was
never assigned to anyone.)

I am done with it. I had hoped to make a point and move on (prompted in
no small part by the suggestion that the foundation take zotero under
its aegis), and but for my take on incremental issues regarding lack of
proper contextual help in the tracker, I would have.  But as I have
tried to suggest, respect is a two way street. Will I move my systems to
AOO?  I don't know yet.  But I won't be reporting any more bugs.

On 8/17/12 1:13 AM, Michael Meeks wrote:
> On Thu, 2012-08-16 at 09:00 -0800, Marc Grober wrote:
> > The latest from Florian in misspelled CAPS (which now brings us to the
> > fact that the devs have touched this bug some 8 times without ever
> > bothering to actually read it) - Bravo Florian, we read you 5 by 5:
>
>       I've read it a couple of times over the years - and concluded that it's
> a minefield: of licensing - bundling GPL pieces, of odd requests:
> "please checkin this binary into your source code revision control", and
> worse.
>
>       It requires some real thought, research and unwinding to get it right.
> It is not a trivial matter of "just shove XYZ file into your
> distribution" - while that may work, it is not a sustainable way to
> develop software.
>
>       Please don't think that because your bug is not commented on that it is
> not considered. In general I like to provide some positive input in bugs
> rather than the above. As such, we need to find someone to do the hard
> work to get the code provenance unwound, and grok the situation as to
> what can be included and how.
>
>       Since I don't have the time to do that now, and I know of no-one that
> does, it looks set to continue to remain open; at least until someone is
> motivated to do the necessary work. It looks just like a lot of other
> nice-to-have features we want but can't yet resource.
>
>       All the best,
>
>               Michael.


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