Canonical/Ubuntu question

[Bart Silverstrim]

scott wrote:
> Thomas Kaiser wrote:
>> Bart Silverstrim wrote:
>>   
>>> I don't know if anyone can or will answer this...sometimes this list is 
>>> quite hit or miss...but are there people from Canonical or developers 
>>> for apps in the repos monitoring the list(s)?
>>>
>>> I was curious since I went from 8.04 to 8.10 and had 3 issues so far on 
>>> 2 machines, and it seems that the issues were known problems from beta 
>>> testing and I think they're in the bug tracker, but I don't know if 
>>> there's ever any feedback on what the status of the bug is. The webcam 
>>> driver issue seemed to have been reported other places, but am I holding 
>>> my breath that it's being worked on or is it one of those things that 
>>> will be ignored or left as obsolete? So I wondered if there was a site 
>>> or method of finding out before deciding if I need to downgrade or get 
>>> rid of the hardware in question, or what the best practices was in that 
>>> situation.
>>>
>>> Not trying to start a flamewar or fit. I'm asking how as an end user to 
>>> get feedback on issues rather than just shouting to the mountains, or if 
>>> the bug tracker is the last word...in which case it seems kind of open 
>>> ended.
>>>
>>>     
>> Which Webcam and which version of Ubuntu?

Ubuntu is Intrepid.  2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Tue Nov 4 19:33:20 UTC 2008 
i686 from Uname.

Webcam:
Bus 002 Device 007: ID 046d:08d7 Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Communicate STX
Bus 002 Device 006: ID 046d:08d7 Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Communicate STX

The cam worked fine before in Hardy, think it's an issue with gspca 
driver? There was some latent buzz about it during the betas, I've 
discovered after the fact.

>> Thomas
>>
>> PS: I am not a Ubuntu developer, but you should have more details in 
>> your question.

I posted before, but didn't see any replies to it (webcam specific). I 
posted about the first problem (intel video problem, known bug). Network 
issue I googled and found network manager has an issue at times (would 
see internal network, not go past the gateway, DNS wasn't responding, 
had a static IP...wiped /etc/network/interfaces and rebooted, now I have 
a DHCP address and all works but I can't use the network manager to 
actually alter settings or do anything with the network) and then webcam 
I discovered giving a green screen with "error getting image" errors 
appearing on the console when running gqcam, even though both 
/dev/video* devices are there and appear to have modules running.

> I was just wondering. Programming experience? By the way you posted, my
> guess would be probably.
> 
> If you have the skills , you can always jump in and help the developers.
> 
> After all, isn't that what open software is all about?

True enough that people do contribute and help...I'm not sure who 
exactly you're addressing on this. I didn't mean to imply that people 
don't. But there are are projects that quietly die out and people who 
don't want to get up to speed with a particular project just to fix a 
glitch. I certainly can't.

> And, yes, I help as much as I can. Not trying to be coy. Just saying
> that free software still requires a lot of time and effort.
> 
> If I'm wrong, sorry. You can still help by adding your two-cents worth,
> as a user, to any developer of your choice.

The question I was originally asking with this was whether there was an 
easy or accepted way to get the status of a problem, if it was being 
worked or not. But the end user still needs to know *how* to get 
feedback from a developer aside from knowing that "it's been filed". Is 
he working on a fix? Is it a side project he'll probably get to in a 
month or two? Is he busy rebuilding his car instead of that damn driver 
again?

Just...y'know...feedback from feedback.