EOL release bug triage (was: Re: Low bug triage activity all around)

[Micah Gersten]

On 01/01/2013 04:49 PM, AG Restringere wrote:
>
> I'm just getting started with bug reports as I a recently joined
> Ubuntu-X and am starting to get the hang of it.  One of the issues I'm
> having is the fact that many of the old bugs are for versions of
> Ubuntu that have already reached "end of life" such as 11.10 or 10.04
> and are no longer supported.  I feel like telling these bug reporters
> to upgrade and see if it's fixed but I don't know if that's the way to
> go.  
>
Ubuntu 11.10 and 10.04 are both supported still.  11.10 and 10.04
desktop reach end-of-life in April 2013, 10.04 server is supported until
April 2015.
Just because a bug is filed against an old release, doesn't mean that
it's not valid.  We have [1], but if you notice, it mentions testing the
issue before replying.  If the submitter gave us a proper reproducer in
the bug or if the reproducer is obvious, we should try to see if the
issue still exists as they already did their part.  Asking them to
upgrade every 6 months or having a reply such as "Does your problem
still exist" is very demotivating and will encourage people not to
report bugs since we don't "do" anything useful with them anyways.
A bug does not magically disappear in a newer release, it either is
fixed, or the code/environment causing the issue is removed or changed;
otherwise, it will linger forever.
If you don't want to test old bugs, work on something else, we have no
shortage of bugs in Launchpad to look at (115k+).  Please don't punish
those users that have done their due diligence.

Thanks,
Micah

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Responses#Release_has_reached_EOL