(seemingly) declinging bug report numbers
 

Hi.

Some days ago Christian reported[0] about #690000 with the feeling that
bug report numbers in Debian were declining, which Don’s post[1] later
seemingly confirmed.

I wondered myself whether this is a problem for Debian and if so, what
we can do against it?


First declining bug numbers are not necessarily a problem, because it
could just mean that we're getting better and better, or that more and
more upstream issues are reported upstream (which would be a good thing
IMHO), or that the maintainers already catch many problems themselves.


On the other hand, some worries are there that this could imply some
decline in Debian itself.
Well I still think Debian is the best distro out there for most (if not
all cases), even though I'd like to see it putting more emphasis on
security.
But, admittedly me not being the biggest *buntu fan (diplomatically
said), things like [2] disturb me quite a lot. Gives me somehow the
feeling as if it was an invitation to leave Debian towards *buntu.
Anyway,... that might be another reason for a decline (if there is
any),... being slowly assimilated by *buntu (and even helping with that)


Another reason could be, that people have problems with the BTS.
Don't get me wrong, I personally like it a lot... and I wouldn't want to
have e.g. launchpad (if at all,... I'm quite a bugzilla fan)... but
especially for end-users BTS might be tricky to use and I know even some
fellow computer scientists which complained about it (and asked whether
there was a more bugzilla-ish web interface or so).


Well.. I'm curious what other people think. :)


Cheers,
Chris.


[0] http://www.perrier.eu.org/weblog/2012/10/09#690000
[1] http://www.donarmstrong.com/posts/bug_reporting_rate/
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-changes/2012/10/msg00539.html

(seemingly) declinging bug report numbers
 

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 2:46 AM, Christoph Anton Mitterer
<calestyo@scientia.net> wrote:
> Some days ago Christian reported[0] about #690000 with the feeling that
> bug report numbers in Debian were declining, which Don’s post[1] later
> seemingly confirmed.

I believe the script is incorrect. It does not count ubuntu bugs that
gets fixed in debian, without ever being referenced in debian BTS...

2cts
-M


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(seemingly) declinging bug report numbers
 

On Thu, 2012-10-11 at 09:15 +0200, Mathieu Malaterre wrote:
> I believe the script is incorrect. It does not count ubuntu bugs that
> gets fixed in debian, without ever being referenced in debian BTS...
Well but it's up to interpretation, whether that wouldn't be a worrying
sign, too. I mean that bugs are fixed rather via Ubuntu.


Cheers,
Chris.

(seemingly) declinging bug report numbers
 

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 5:51 PM, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:

> Well but it's up to interpretation, whether that wouldn't be a worrying
> sign, too. I mean that bugs are fixed rather via Ubuntu.

Where bugs are reported doesn't matter, as long as they get fixed.
Personally I look at the bug trackers for Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo and
other distributions (using whohas) when I'm preparing both new
upstream releases and also when preparing Debian uploads.

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bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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(seemingly) declinging bug report numbers
 

Il giorno gio, 11/10/2012 alle 02.46 +0200, Christoph Anton Mitterer ha
scritto:
>
> On the other hand, some worries are there that this could imply some
> decline in Debian itself.
> Well I still think Debian is the best distro out there for most (if not
> all cases), even though I'd like to see it putting more emphasis on
> security.

I've seen recently several company I'm working with getting away from
Debian in favor of Ubuntu because they have a LTS version. However I
don't know if this is a general trend.

Ciao,
Marco

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---------------------------------------------------------------------
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| mnencia@prato.linux.it | http://www.prato.linux.it/~mnencia |
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Key fingerprint = FED9 69C7 9E67 21F5 7D95 5270 6864 730D F095 E5E4

(seemingly) declinging bug report numbers
 

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 11:51:50AM +0200, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:
> On Thu, 2012-10-11 at 09:15 +0200, Mathieu Malaterre wrote:
> > I believe the script is incorrect. It does not count ubuntu bugs that
> > gets fixed in debian, without ever being referenced in debian BTS...
> Well but it's up to interpretation, whether that wouldn't be a worrying
> sign, too. I mean that bugs are fixed rather via Ubuntu.

I wonder: did upstream developers start to worry when the number of bugs
report they received *directly* started to decrease, due to Debian
distributing their software? (Note: that started to happen "a few" years
ago, like 15-20 :-)) They probably did worry, yes. But as long as Debian
play it right with them, by triaging/forwarding bug reports to them as
needed, no harm is done. In fact, the resulting ecosystem probably
brings *more* users and bug report to them than before, albeit now they
are mediated. Looks like the same situation.

--
Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . zack@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o
Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o
Debian Project Leader . . . . . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o .
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »

(seemingly) declinging bug report numbers
 

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Le 11/10/2012 13:40, Stefano Zacchiroli a écrit :
> On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 11:51:50AM +0200, Christoph Anton Mitterer
> wrote:
>> On Thu, 2012-10-11 at 09:15 +0200, Mathieu Malaterre wrote:
>>> I believe the script is incorrect. It does not count ubuntu
>>> bugs that gets fixed in debian, without ever being referenced
>>> in debian BTS...
>> Well but it's up to interpretation, whether that wouldn't be a
>> worrying sign, too. I mean that bugs are fixed rather via
>> Ubuntu.
>
> I wonder: did upstream developers start to worry when the number of
> bugs report they received *directly* started to decrease, due to
> Debian distributing their software? (Note: that started to happen
> "a few" years ago, like 15-20 :-)) They probably did worry, yes.
> But as long as Debian play it right with them, by
> triaging/forwarding bug reports to them as needed, no harm is done.
> In fact, the resulting ecosystem probably brings *more* users and
> bug report to them than before, albeit now they are mediated. Looks
> like the same situation.
>

Users who get software through the Debian packages are still 100%
users of said software.

I guess the matter here is the recurring questions: are Ubuntu users
100% Debian users? Are we happy to provide high quality through
derivative distributions, or are we worried (or sad) that they don't
use Debian directly?

I personally really don't see a problem with having less bugs reported
in Debian proper, as long as the bugs are found and eventually fixed
in Debian (and further upstream). And I don't care much whether my
packages are used under Debian or rebuilt for Ubuntu, as long as they
are useful to somebody.

As a matter of fact, I consider it bonus if work I do for Debian also
benefits users of other distros, and being higher along the stream
means whatever we do trickles down to more users.

Kind regards, Thibaut.
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(seemingly) declinging bug report numbers
 

]] Thibaut Paumard

> Users who get software through the Debian packages are still 100%
> users of said software.

This might be your impression. It does not at all match my impression.

Quite a few upstreams thinks Debian are working contrary to their design
and their goals and are actively hindering adoption of their software.
If you're interested in examples, just take a look at how rubygems was
handled in Debian until wheezy and all the silliness around node.js and
/usr/bin/node.

--
Tollef Fog Heen
UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are


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(seemingly) declinging bug report numbers
 

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Hash: SHA256

Le 11/10/2012 17:29, Tollef Fog Heen a écrit :
> ]] Thibaut Paumard
>
>> Users who get software through the Debian packages are still
>> 100% users of said software.
>
> This might be your impression. It does not at all match my
> impression.
>
> Quite a few upstreams thinks Debian are working contrary to their
> design and their goals and are actively hindering adoption of their
> software. If you're interested in examples, just take a look at how
> rubygems was handled in Debian until wheezy and all the silliness
> around node.js and /usr/bin/node.
>

Well, upstream may have bad feelings about it, but from my point of
view Debian did the right thing, and by helping realize that "node"
was a poor name choice for an executable, actually helped upstream on
the longer run.

In any case Debian users of node.js are users of node.js (welcome to
the tautology club).

As upstream, one reason I value packaging early my own software under
Debian is precisely that it helps me spot conflicts with unrelated
software.

Kind regards, Thibaut.
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(seemingly) declinging bug report numbers
 

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 05:29:51PM +0200, Tollef Fog Heen wrote:
> This might be your impression. It does not at all match my impression.

> Quite a few upstreams thinks Debian are working contrary to their design
> and their goals and are actively hindering adoption of their software.
> If you're interested in examples, just take a look at how rubygems was
> handled in Debian until wheezy and all the silliness around node.js and
> /usr/bin/node.

When, as in the case of node.js, upstream is antisocial and has an
overinflated sense of self-importance, it's perfectly appropriate for Debian
to work contrary to their design. Our job is not to make upstreams happy,
it's to make our *users* happy; and while being good Free Software citizens
means we try to respect the wishes of upstreams as well, there are
exceptions.

--
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Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
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