Is Canonical against Kubuntu (2): the bug tracking disaster

[Derek Broughton]

Anton wrote:

> And voila, its me again.
> 
> Here is the next frustrating item.
> 
> I use kubuntu 8.10 (hoping that 9.04 will be better, but..)
> My pc was bought in end 2006, so now its not "too new"
> to contain some ultra new hardware, and not "too old".
...
> I know bug hunting is no fun... I did it myself,
> but the proble here is that bugs are simply ignored.
... 
>  Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make
>  Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been
>  any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for
>  you? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? Â (ISOs
>  are available from cdimage.ubuntu.com)
> 
> This means: "nobody checked it, but perhaps we fixed it"
> The only problem was: I got this message 1 week or so before the next
> release... which was clearly too late.

Yes, I've had that message, and it's annoying, and I agree with your
interpretation (except that it's not really "perhaps we fixed it"
but "perhaps it got fixed upstream" - kubuntu devs _know_ they didn't fix
it).  However, who do you _think_ is going to fix it?  Clearly bug reports
with no activity are not a high priority for many users, so they don't
become high-priority for developers either.

> Example 2:
... 
> I filed a bug.
> 
> After some time nothing happened, I added a comment asking whats up.
> 
> After I while I got an email
> TELLING ME THAT THE BUG WAS MOVED TO A FORUM
> AND THAT THIS BUG WOULD BE CONSIDERED TO BE CLOSED
> IF NOBODY IN THE FORUM FOUND A SOLUTION.
> 
> Wow, .. sorry but .. this was shoking !

To me too.  That's not acceptable - but without a bug number there's not
much the rest of us can do to object.

> Its more or less:
> " we are not interested,.. if somebody else
> wants to do the jobs then fine, otherwise .. who cares"
 
And your problem with that is...?  I know that's flippant, but it's
reality.  "Canonical" is not against Kubuntu - it just isn't very much
_for_ Kubuntu.  It has very few (possibly NO) resources dedicated to
Kubuntu, and the volunteer maintainers have no obligation to work on
_anything_, let alone things that don't interest them. 
> Conclusion:
> 
> Kubuntu bugs seems not to be welcome:
> - it takes half of years until somebody even reads the report
>   (otherwise somebody could haved asked me for more informations/details
>   more quickly)

Actually, the really annoying thing I tend to get is immediate responses
that I haven't provided enough information.  Never mind that they got
everything that was available.

> - I see no progress between kubuntu versions: the sound problem started
> with
>   7.10 = 2 years ago .
> - Bugs which I filed directly to the kde team have more activity

Of course they do - there are more people involved.  But if your problem
hasn't been fixed in 2 years, then I guess it's not making much difference
upstream, either.

> If canonical collects more and more unresolved bugs,
> than it will be harder and harde to check what is still buggy and what
> not.

Which is why they're trying to get you to close bugs right before the launch
of Jaunty, of course.

Heck, some _Ubuntu_ bugs with high activity take five years+ to fix
(see "reportbug").
-- 
derek