Re: Planned changes for bugzilla.kernel.org to reduce the "Bugzilla blues"

Laurent Pinchart
2022-10-03T15:59:32Z

On Mon, Oct 03, 2022 at 11:51:02AM -0400, Steven Rostedt wrote:
> On Mon, 3 Oct 2022 18:44:45 +0300 Laurent Pinchart wrote:
>
> > > The sad part is that most people that are going to report a bug is not
> > > going to read a full document to figure out how to do it. Usually when
> > > someone hits a bug, they are doing something else. And it's a burden to
> > > report it. Obviously, they want it to be fixed, but it's viewed as a favor
> > > to the developer and not the user to get it fixed, as it's likely seen as a
> > > mistake by the developer that the bug exists in the first place.
> >
> > It really depends on how badly the bug affects the reporter. I'm sure
> > that a bug that prevents GPU or audio from working alone on a shiny
> > brand new laptop will see lots of pings. A side issue noticed by the
> > user that wouldn't really affect them is more likely to end up in a
> > blackhole. I recently faced issues with a display controller. I sent
> > patches for the problems affecting my use case, and only notified the
> > maintainer for the other issues. Those have been "added to their todo
> > list (TM)". But is that really a problem ? If I'm not affected and
> > neither is the maintainer, there's likely better use of their time, at
> > least until a user who is really affected by the problem shows up.
>
> I guess that's the main question. If we see hundreds of bugzilla reports
> ignored, are they the one offs that nobody really cares about, or are they
> the ones where it's preventing someone from using their new laptop properly?
>
> Sometimes, even if it prevents a laptop from working properly, it could be
> ignored if a workaround is in place. Like just buying an external webcam if
> you can't get the internal one working.

That's an interesting example. https://lwn.net/Articles/904776/ shows
how it made lots of users *very* unhappy.

--
Regards,

Laurent Pinchart