[LAU] So what do you think sucks about Linux audio ?

Paul Davis paul at linuxaudiosystems.com
Mon Feb 11 21:45:09 UTC 2013


On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 4:18 PM, Fons Adriaensen <fons at linuxaudio.org>wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 05:13:02PM +0100, Kjetil Matheussen wrote:
>
> > Paul Davis:
> >
> > >if you're not willing to participate in the managed handling of a
> > >bug, i'm not interested in your bug.
>
> 'Your bug' is a bit missing the point. It's the author's bug, not
> the user's.
>

it may be the author's bug, but the author may have zero reason to care
about it right now, or this month, or this year. it may, nevertheless, be
extremely useful to have it filed away so that when the author(s) do care
for one reason or another, attention will be drawn to it. this frequently
happens with ardour, just for the record. lots of bugs get filed in an area
that i'm not currently working on. weeks/months and occasionally years
later, i can go back and find them all when i do start focusing on that
again. in the meantime, calling it "the author's bug" is just a
convenience, even if it is also the truth. it doesn't actually help the
right thing happen at all.


>
> > If there is a bug in my software, I want people to report it any way
> > they like (as long as it's electronically). Bug reports should always
> > be appreciated. I think/hope this goes for many other developers.
>
> It's certainly like that here.
>
> A bugtracker is a tool used by a developer or a team much in
> the same way as an electronic or paper agenda is. If I want
> a meeting with some person I'll call him/her or maybe his/her
> secretary. I don't write myself into his/her agenda or todo-
> list.
>

this is bullshit. i make myself available to "some people" via IRC and
email and web forums for up to 15 hours a day, typically 6 or sometimes 7
days a week. the fact that i am not willing to add "oh sure, i'll just
paste everything you've just told me into the bug tracker" is a reflection
of the fact that both i and the bug reporter recognize that as a silly
waste of whatever time i have left.


>
> If some project gets a bug report via email or a mailing list
> it's a simple matter for a developer to enter it into the bug
> tracker of his/her choice. Or write it down on a post-it (TM).
> It probably takes less time than reading, evaluating and
> assigning it, which has to be done anyway.
>

clearly, you're not working on any projects with the kind of bug flow that
i do, let alone ones i've worked on in the past.

at what point do you believe that this "the developer should take care of
it" scales itself out of existence?  5 bugs a day? 10 bugs a day? and what
happens when there are >1 developers? who "writes it down on a post-it(TM)"
or enters it in the tracker? whose bug is it then anyway?

and how does this cover feature requests, which to the user are often
indistinguishable from bug reports? if there are 10 people this week who
have an idea for how ardour should do something, does that i get to spend
10xN minutes entering these ideas in the only place that i can sensibly
review in the future?
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