Fwd: Re: How to use the new Launchpad status?

[Deryck Hodge]

Hi, Martin.

On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 1:10 AM, Martin Pitt <martin.pitt at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Hello Brian,
>
> Micah Gersten [2010-07-07 20:06 -0500]:
>> Forwarding Brian Murray's response from the ubuntu-bugsquad list.
>> As an example there might be a bug about Ubuntu bug reports not being
>> fixed which will not stay in an Invalid status because that issue
>> happens to be an important matter to a lot of people.  Subsequently,
>> setting a bug like that to Opinion may be a useful thing to do.
>
> This seems like a prime example what Opinion should _not_ be. If a bug
> cannot be fixed, then no amount of "but this sucks!" exclamations will
> change this. So that bug should really be "Invalid".
>
> A better approach to this would IMHO be to make it much harder to
> reopen bugs which are in a terminal state (fix released, wontfix,
> invalid).
>

Brian and I have been discussing this offline, and I wanted to jump in
here if that's okay. :-)

I agree that making bugs in a terminal state more fully closed or
locked down is a worthwhile goal.  We have plans to do some bits of
what people want in this regard, and in fact, at the same time as we
began discussing the Opinion status, we accepted a patch to make
"Won't Fix" ACLed so that only bug supervisors can un-set it.  If you
want to lock the status of a closed bug, you should be using Won't
Fix.

We aren't going to move ahead with other lock down techniques like
this until we finish reviewing the success of the Opinion status on
its own merits.  Meaning, we don't want to introduce too many changes
around closed bug statuses at once, so our stats about the usefulness
of Opinion are good.  The current plan is to review the effectiveness
of this status in 3 months.

I agree it's not entirely clear that Opinion is a closed bug status,
but it is.  It works just like Invalid.  It is only named differently,
and it is meant to convey the idea that:  "this bug is closed but a
difference of opinion remains."  It's a social status, and should be
used as such.  I agree with Brian's assessment that it should be used
rarely or as a last resort.  It is for a particular social situation
only, i.e. bugs that won't remain closed because of that remaining
difference of opinion.

Now as to whether or not Ubuntu developers or the bug squad use the
status at all, that is, of course, entirely up to you all.  If you
don't find the status useful, that is another data point about its
effectiveness.  However, I hope someone will use it, so that we have
some data about how effective it is in the situation it's designed
for.


Cheers,
deryck

-- 
Deryck Hodge
https://launchpad.net/~deryck
http://www.devurandom.org/