Updated: Mozilla Community Contributor Departs Over Bug Handling 334
An anonymous reader writes "A blog post published by Mozilla community contributor Tyler Downer claims the Mozilla Triage QA process is broken, and he believes that the rapid release implementation does not work with their current method of handling bugs. Quoting: 'I understand that change takes time, and there is always a delay between planning a change, and the implementation. But with Triage, time is our enemy. We currently have 2,598 UNCO bugs in Firefox that haven’t been touched in 150 days. That is almost 2600 bugs that have not been touched since Firefox 4 was released. ... In Spring 2010, we hit roughly 13,000 UNCO bugs in the Firefox product on BMO. 13,000!!! We currently have 5,934. While this is an improvement, that is 6,000 bugs in Firefox that could be shipping today, and enhancements that could be making the web better (of course it isn’t that high, but the potential is there). This is several thousand contributors that we have told "Thank you for filing a bug report with us. We don’t really care about it, and we are going to let it sit for 6 months and just ask you to retest when you know it isn’t fixed, but thank you anyway."'"
Update: 08/29 19:46 GMT by S : Downer has made another blog post clarifying the bug issue. Updated title and summary to reflect that he was a volunteer, not a Mozilla employee.
FF was good, then... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mozilla community is killing Firefox with their super-fast releases. we went from 4 to 7 in no time.. (i'm on the beta channel)
Addons break non stop because of upgrades
Bugs arent being fixed
= Users will leave soon ?
Re:FF was good, then... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Firefox lost "good" long before the rapid releases began. Rapid releases were just a (failed) attempt to fix the suck.
I'm not sure Firefox ever really lost anything, though. It's possible my tolerance for lame cross platform solutions has just gone way, way down.
Mozilla Foundation is badly managed. (Score:4, Interesting)
Add-ons are the reason people use Firefox. Decisions are made that break Firefox Add-ons, without notice.
Firefox is extremely important because it is the only browser that has such an extensive list of add-ons. (Unfortunately, Add-ons are also called "extensions" and "plug-ins".) For some uses, the add-ons are so convenient that they can be considered necessary.
Firefox instability corrupts the Windows operating system. There is huge instability seen only by people who open many windows and tabs, and leave them open for a long time. (It is not necessary to say you don't experience this bug if you don't commonly have 30 or more windows with 100 or more tabs open for several hours. Those of us who must do research have needs different than the average user.) That particular Firefox instability has been there since version 1, perhaps 10 years ago. An example: Two days ago I had a crash in Firefox version 6.0 that did not generate a Talkback report.
Mozilla Foundation Top 20 Excuses for Not Fixing Firefox Bugs (Last updated in 2009.)
Here are the top 20 things Firefox and Mozilla developers say to those who report difficult bugs, collected over the last 8 years. See also the extensive information provided in this Slashdot comment, Firefox is the most unstable program in common use [slashdot.org], and the links in the comment.
Re:Mozilla Foundation is badly managed. (Score:4, Interesting)
Mozilla Foundation has always been badly managed. In the beginning it was managed by Winifred Mitchell Baker, a socially backward lawyer with no technical experience.
Add-ons are the reason people use Firefox. Decisions are made that break Firefox Add-ons, without notice.
Firefox is extremely important because it is the only browser that has such an extensive list of add-ons. (Unfortunately, Add-ons are also called "extensions" and "plug-ins".) For some uses, the add-ons are so convenient that they can be considered necessary.
Mozilla is not breaking add-ons anymore. Now, addons are scanned by a bot and if no problems are expected, the addons compatibility version range is automatically extended to the current version. I have seen this with my addons.
Addons are themes and extensions. Plugins are something completely different, for instance Flash and Movie players, i.e. implementations of the nsplugin-api. This is clearly defined by Mozilla.
Re: (Score:3)
I agree, but what is the alternative?
Safari is bloated by the inclusion of Quicktime, Apple Updater and half of MacOS just so that the fonts render the Mac way.
Chrome is fast but still a bit rough, and the developers make Mozilla look caring when it comes to long standing feature requests. I suppose they only care about things Google cares about like making pages load faster, rather than usability issues or bug fixes. Sounds oddly familiar... Does anyone other than Google do significant work on it? Annoying
Re: (Score:3)
I regularly hit 1.4-1.6gb RAM usage with as few as 3 tabs open and that generally causes my system to become unstable and results in a shutdown of Firefox. I guarantee part of it is extensions but I see similar behaviour in machines without extensions. I've also seen the CPU bugs where it hits 100% and stays there. Typically these days it's been taking 25% even after all tabs have been closed. I still experience crashes without talkback, hang-ups that require a process kill, and an endless number of "in
Re:Mozilla Foundation is badly managed. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know a single user that fits that "typical" though I'm sure they exist in droves.
The users I know
1) 50+ tabs open at all times the browser never gets shut down unless there's a problem. This is the type of person who uses tabs as a way of storing what they'd like to read at some point or are doing research and need to draw from a lot of sources. They typically know search engines well enough to use them but not well enough to find the same thing twice.
2) One tab only, they could switch to Netscape Navigator and be just fine
3) Hammers youtube constantly. Browser based games (ie: heavy flash/java use). These are usually kids
4) Opens/closes tabs fast an furiously - rarely ever uses the back/forward button instead would rather open a new tab and redownload it. Doesn't shut down the browser because it takes too long to load. Geeks mostly.
#2 is the only one Firefox does well.
Re: (Score:3)
A creative volunteer body will largely pursue what interests it the most. Bug fixing can be an annoying tedious task, of fixing one problem only to create others, until finally creating the right fix that often fixes many problems at once. Another big problem with bug fixing in a non fixed coding environment, as the application keeps evolving and developing, is your bug fixes might be made dysfunctional.
So what is really required is a, development holiday, a break from making improvements in Firefox to p
Re: (Score:3)
6 weeks is an awful short time between releases. Why not make it 4 or 6 months? That's still 2-3 version numbers a year. Current cycles means Mozilla are releasing over 8 versions a year, too many to keep track of, it seems Bugzilla is finding it hard to keep up too.
I've pretty much given up on Mozilla, I no longer triage bugs for them. There is no time to take bugs seriously, everything is focused on the next version number and the one under-the-hood thing that gets added in the new version.
Re: (Score:2)
I completely fail to see the connection between the actual version numbers in releases, or release frequency, and the bug tracking system, or how they influence each other.
Care to explain?
One thing I could imagine is that it is more likely that the developers will ask you to test something again on the latest release. Not a big change here, I'd guess before they'd have asked you to test on a nightly.
Re:FF was good, then... (Score:5, Informative)
Way to read the article. Tyler specifically mentions in the first 10 sentences that he love Rapid Release, and it has absolutely nothing to do with his departure.
His complaint is the same as the complaints have always been for Firefox-- it takes forever for bugs to get fixed.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm still waiting on a bug to be fixed that dates back to version 4 beta. It's not something trivial, I get a BSoD after about 15-20 minutes of regular use. I've looked online, I've submitted bugs, I've done just about everything they've suggested, save one: 'Turn off Crossfire whenever I use their browser', and frankly, that's in no way a real solution at all. Every other suggestion has been useless and not fixed the problem, and the problem continues to persist with every release...and based on the nu
Re:FF was good, then... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm still waiting on a bug to be fixed that dates back to version 4 beta. It's not something trivial, I get a BSoD after about 15-20 minutes of regular use. I've looked online, I've submitted bugs, I've done just about everything they've suggested, save one: 'Turn off Crossfire whenever I use their browser', and frankly, that's in no way a real solution at all.
Applications per se won't give you a BSOD, because that generally means something went horribly wrong in kernel mode. Sounds like the ATI drivers have a bug that causes a crash with Crossfire enabled, and Firefox can't rewrite those drivers for you.
Re:FF was good, then... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:FF was good, then... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would they? I'm just a user and I had no problems with the fast releases.
Because every new release is increasingly dumbed down and randomly removes user interface components or moves them around so you have to find them again and then remember where they were when you go back to an old version? And your only choice is either 3.6 or the current latest version because they now refuse to support any other versions?
The only thing really keeping me on Firefox now is Noscript.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you kidding? FF 6 starts in half the time of previous releases on my 5-year old laptop.
As for outstanding bugs, many of those UNCO bugs are: "My internet is broken"
Clearly, a lot of people file bugs who just don't know how to get support.
Re: (Score:3)
If many of those UNCO bugs are "My internet is broken" they should be easy to close out. Put in some sort of boilerplate, like:
"Mozilla Firefox simply displays web pages that you retrieve from the Internet using your connection to your Internet Service Provider (or ISP) which is the company you pay for Internet service. The problem you reported appears to be related to an issue with the connection between your computer and your ISP. We have no control over that connection, so there is no way that we could f
Re:You're wrong about addons (Score:5, Insightful)
All you have to do is open the xpi in e.g. 7zip or winrar, open the install.rdf in a text editor, search for maxVersion, and change it to match your version. Change it to something big, like 10, and you'll be in the clear for a long time.
"All you have to do" fail for 90% of the people we talked into using Firefox a few years back.
Re: (Score:2)
There is an addon compatibility tool [mozilla.org] that you can use to force addons to be enabled, a lot easier and more user-friendly. It is still more of a tool for people that know what they're doing.
Also pretty sure there's some sort of functionality in the addons.mozilla.org site that will automatically update addons to declare compatibility if they don't use any APIs that were changed, or something like that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:You're wrong about addons (Score:5, Insightful)
I moved my parents onto Firefox (with a few key addons) so that I wouldn't have to do this kind of shit to keep their computer running. If I'm going to bother with anything, it would be to point them to the Opera or Chrome installer. That's easier than either of your suggestions, both for me and for them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
people just switch.
Re: (Score:3)
You are thinking like a nerd, not a computer user. I did not know this information, so I was one of those 90% people until today. And you would be surprised how many people are using FireFox but could not possibly do this. Yes, even with step by step instructions.
"I refuse to believe that 90% of car owners cannot change their own oil." That statement makes as much sense as yours. Maybe they could, but they won't, and don't think they should.
Lots of people wiped their parents/friends/neighbors computers
Re: (Score:3)
You are thinking like a nerd, not a computer user. I did not know this information, so I was one of those 90% people until today. And you would be surprised how many people are using FireFox but could not possibly do this. Yes, even with step by step instructions.
"I refuse to believe that 90% of car owners cannot change their own oil." That statement makes as much sense as yours. Maybe they could, but they won't, and don't think they should.
Lots of people wiped their parents/friends/neighbors computers because of their inability to understand anything at all, getting viruses and popups and toolbars and whatnot. And they put Firefox on, and said "there, use that, that's the internet." Those people will click any update box, any OK button just to "make the damned thing go away." They will not update a text file inside a zip, or if they try they will not do it correctly.
"Just associate .zip files with WinZip" you say. I wish we had known when we set people up to use Firefox that this was coming, or we might have.
Its more like saying "I refuse to believe that 90% of car owners don't know how to set the correct gap on their spark plugs."
Car owners know that they the oil in a car can be changed. Car owners know that the oil in their car should be changed. Car owners may even know that some of the steps involved in changing oil include removing old oil and pouring new oil in, but may not know the precise amount or that the filter should be changed as well.
Some car owners don't even know what a spark plug is, much less
Re: (Score:2)
"You mean I drop my internet on this EXE? But I've been told that I should never open exe's on the internet."
"I edited the file like you said, but now my Firefox won't open."
"How did you do it?"
"Well, first I opened the file up in Word... That's a text editor, right?"
Re: (Score:2)
90% of users don't know how to use the search function. Do you really believe that the steps you specify are feasible to them?
Re: (Score:2)
They already have addons which automate it, and have since like firefox 1.0. Mr Tech's nightly tester tools I think theyre called.
Re: (Score:2)
Add-on Compatibility Reporter is the one you're looking for.
Re: (Score:3)
For a product that allegedly has 6000 bugs, I don't encounter very many,
Well, 6000 unconfirmed bug reports. As pointed out elsewhere, this includes "my internetz don't work", duplicates, feature requests, and complaints the UX team is on crack.
This is down from 13000.
Re: (Score:3)
But my main point is that addons are not broken. I'm using the exact same addons I used in Firefox 3 - I should know because I didn't download new ones. All you have to do is open the xpi in e.g. 7zip or winrar, open the install.rdf in a text editor, search for maxVersion, and change it to match your version. Change it to something big, like 10, and you'll be in the clear for a long time.
Seems quite user friendly. [end of the irony]
Now I hope you can explain me:
Seriously, release
Re: (Score:2)
Because opening a zip file, opening a text file, and changing a digit are the antithesis of user-friendly. Coming from someone who is using Linux, that's a little bit chuckle-worthy.
BTW, you don't edit the XPI that already exists in /usr. You can go download the XPI from the web into your plain old download folder, edit the file there, and then go through Firefox's Addon Manager and Install Add-on from file.
Re: (Score:2)
The point is that most FF users are not Linux users. And even people who know how to do your fix, don't think they should be required to for things to work. I certainly don't want to have to go and redo all my config files any time I update a piece of software. Having to do that is a sign of poor design decisions somewhere along the line.
As someone else said, you can't have ever done any tech support. You have no idea how stupid and/or lazy people really are. Laziness is both a blessing and a curse for huma
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
All you have to do is open the xpi in e.g. 7zip or winrar, open the install.rdf in a text editor, search for maxVersion, and change it to match your version. Change it to something big, like 10, and you'll be in the clear for a long time.
You mean for about a week or two?
Re:You're wrong about addons (Score:5, Informative)
All you have to do is open the xpi in e.g. 7zip or winrar, open the install.rdf in a text editor, search for maxVersion, and change it to match your version. Change it to something big, like 10, and you'll be in the clear for a long time.
Holy shit ... I can't believe I just read that. That's not a solution. That's not even close to one. It may work for you and other developers, but for the average user, you might as well have them download another browser.
What someone needs to do is actually fix the add-on code in firefox itself so that users don't have to jump through hoops for every release. This new release schedule is forcing people to avoid upgrading which is the last thing you want.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not uncommon for a shipping product to have a huge number of bugs, it was well publicised that windows 2000 had 65,000 known bugs when released...
If there were a large number of really serious bugs then the software would be unusable, which is why they concentrate on the major bugs first... Less serious ones can usually wait.
Re:You're wrong about addons (Score:5, Funny)
it was well publicised that windows 2000 had 65,000 known bugs when released
Sheesh, couldn't they have found another 536 bugs to make it a nice round number?
Re: (Score:3)
All you have to do is open the xpi in e.g. 7zip or winrar, open the install.rdf in a text editor, search for maxVersion, and change it to match your version. Change it to something big, like 10, and you'll be in the clear for a long time.
And how does this work for signed plugins and extensions?
YOU'RE wrong about addons (Score:3)
The picture you paint may seem rosy to you, but it is not attractive most people IMO. The good news is, reality is even better than you think it is.
If the add-on developer hosts the add-on on addons.mozilla.org (AMO), the browser will check with AMO to see if the extension is compatible when the browser starts; if so, the maxVersion of the extension is *automatically* bumped.
The extension compatilibity is determined through automated analysis, and the *vast* majority of updates work properly this way. The
Re: (Score:2)
Sell the private jet and hire people to tackle this problem Mozilla CEO.
>50 open positions, including (of course) QA:
http://hire.jobvite.com/CompanyJobs/Careers.aspx?k=JobListing&c=qpX9Vfwa&v=1 [jobvite.com]
Re: (Score:2)
I remember some problems in the past, maybe at the time of FF 3.x but which addons are breaking now because of updates? I'm using (from config:addons) Adblock Plus + Element Hiding Helper, Aviary, Better Privacy, Firebug + Firecookie, Grease Monkey, Live HTTP Headers, No Script, Remote XUL Manager, Stylish, Web Developer. They survived the update from FF4 to FF5 and to FF6. Maybe I'm just lucky, I'm using mainstream and well managed addons.
My what a short memory you have.
Firebug broke when Firefox 4 was released. And even , addons require unnecessary updates for no reason other than to update the max version number every time a new Firefox is announced, even if the plugin's functionality is unchanged.
Zarro boogs found (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh how the times have changed. For info about QA for Netscape 4.0, see this short refresher course:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarro_boogs [wikipedia.org]
--- cut here --
The following comment is provided in the Bugzilla source code to developers who may be confused by this behaviour: ... way back when, when Netscape released version 4.0 of its browser, we had a release party. Naturally, there had been a big push to try and fix every known bug before the release. Naturally, that hadn't actually happened. (This is not unique to Netscape or to 4.0; the same thing has happened with every software project I've ever seen.) Anyway, at the release party, T-shirts were handed out that said something like "Netscape 4.0: Zarro Boogs". Just like the software, the T-shirt had no known bugs. Uh-huh. So, when you query for a list of bugs, and it gets no results, you can think of this as a friendly reminder. Of *course* there are bugs matching your query, they just aren't in the bugsystem yet...
Zarro Boogs Found
This is just a goofy way of saying that there were no bugs found matching your query. When asked to explain this message, Terry Weissman (an early Bugzilla developer) had the following to say:
I've been asked to explain this
--Terry Weissman
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Important Points; But Not a "Community Lead" (Score:5, Interesting)
Mozilla has no such position as "Community Lead". Tyler was/is (he is still engaged in constructive discussion) a valued volunteer member of the Mozilla QA and triage community, but he does not have the title "Community Lead".
There are several things which Mozilla's new more rapid release process has made a bit rocky, as Johnathan Nightingale, the Firefox development manager, noted in a recent blog post [johnath.com] (syndicated at the Future of Firefox blog [mozilla.com]). This is one of them.
And, of course, when Tyler says we have told bug reporters we don't care about their bug reports, that's not actually true. He is suggesting that this is what it might seem like. And clearly, it's not great when a bug report is filed and just sits there for months. Mozilla's success has made this a perennial problem for the last decade. We've cracked it, to a degree, before and I'm sure we can do it again.
Re: (Score:2)
we have told bug reporters we don't care about their bug reports, that's not actually true. He is suggesting that this is what it might seem like.
As a longtime Firefox and Thunderbird bug submitter, let me assure you that this is in fact what it does seem like, and so it is effectively true. I've had some bugs open for 7 or 8 years; I recently saw a bug report complaining that it'd been open for 11. This doesn't cover those odd, irreproducible cases users will always submit - these were just plain bugs.
I w
Re:Important Points; But Not a "Community Lead" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Although he may not have that official title, some people get this title naturally. In every project, some people will shine above the others with natural leadership which might lead them to be recognized as community leaders. For outsiders or newcomers, the distinction might be hard to make. Maybe the wording is simply inappropriately chosen here, presenting it as an official position.
Re:Important Points; But Not a "Community Lead" (Score:4, Insightful)
And, of course, when Tyler says we have told bug reporters we don't care about their bug reports, that's not actually true. He is suggesting that this is what it might seem like.
This is actually worse. If you're not going to act like you care about bug reports, don't tell people you do care about bug reports.
Re: (Score:3)
It's worth noting that Mozilla is still far, far better than pretty much every open source project ever at managing its bug database.
Chromium developers don't even pretend to use the bug database. Even bugs here at Slashdot are utterly ignored 95% of the time.
"Saying we value bug reports and then ignoring our bug database" is pretty much standard operating procedure in the open source world. Kudos on Tyler Downer for making a stand.
Re:Important Points; But Not a "Community Lead" (Score:4, Interesting)
We do care about bug reports, and we try and appear we care about bug reports - both by saying that we care, and trying to handle them. But Tyler is suggesting that our failure to handle all of them means that it might appear that our actions speak louder than our words.
If you want to help the two match up, do get involved with Mozilla :-) We could always use more help. Triage is how I got involved, over 10 years ago.
Re: (Score:3)
We do care about bug reports, and we try and appear we care about bug reports - both by saying that we care, and trying to handle them. But Tyler is suggesting that our failure to handle all of them means that it might appear that our actions speak louder than our words.
If you want to help the two match up, do get involved with Mozilla :-) We could always use more help. Triage is how I got involved, over 10 years ago.
Gerv - I don't doubt your good intentions, but given that you know that most bugs are not carried through to resolution (i.e., a change in released software), you should set that expectation with people who work on bugs. Don't set an expectation based on what you hope to someday be true (but probably won't ever happen). Likely, their bug reporting/triage/patching will not lead to anything useful; as long as you're up front about it with people, there's no problem.
I suspect that after this announcement... (Score:2)
Mozilla will revert the whole-number version scheme. Major_version.minor_version.bug_patch, or even Major_version.bug_patch, was not a bad arrangement at all, why reinvent the wheel?
Re:I suspect that after this announcement... (Score:5, Insightful)
why reinvent the wheel?
Because after long enough time, there's always someone who's irked about the performance of the wheel and wants to replace it with conveyor belts or robot legs. Sometimes even square wheels. And because we've done round wheels for so long, old lessons have faded or been deemed outdated and so we try it. Then it turns out it's not that great except for very limited use cases, but we're too deep invested and stubborn so we'll try fixing it. After a lot of fighting against windmills, we slowly reinvent and rediscover the reasons why we used a wheel in the first place. Then the cycle starts over. Same with most NIH projects, they start out as being radically different and then end up looking much the same after tackling the same challenges.
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously the original wheel wasn't round enough...
Before the flames begin... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just to clear some things up and possibly prevent irrelevant posts...
This has nothing to do with the rapid-release; he states in the 2nd paragraph that
First off, I did not leave because of rapid release. I love the idea of rapid release, and I think the recent spurt of posts to the planet on how Rapid Release will be beneficial in the long run does a great job of explaining it.
His issue is that Triage isnt good enough for rapid release-- not that rapid-release doesnt work with Triage (but thanks for stirring the muck, anonymous reader / soulskill).
But Id like a clarification-- if there were 13,000 bugs 15 months ago, and now there are 6000, doesnt that speak to massive improvement? Why not leave back in spring 2010?
Re: (Score:2)
But Id like a clarification-- if there were 13,000 bugs 15 months ago, and now there are 6000, doesnt that speak to massive improvement? Why not leave back in spring 2010?
Well, IIRC, unconfirmed bug reports (UNCO) are where every bug submission goes before it gets triaged. These bug reports run the gamut of "My internets not working with Firefox" to "Firefox dumps core with gtk+-2.0.3-foobar". It sounds like a lot of bugs, but UNCO is the large gaping pit where every bug report goes before it becomes confirmed. It takes no technical knowlege to issue an UNCO so many of these could just be PEBCAK bugs.
What is UNCO? (Score:2)
I tried googling but all I get are hits about a college. No one ever defines what UNCO is. I even found INCO, but no definition for that either.
Guess.... (Score:2)
I would guess that it meight stand for UNCOrrected.
...nfirmed (Score:2)
Re:What is UNCO? (Score:5, Informative)
I tried googling but all I get are hits about a college. No one ever defines what UNCO is. I even found INCO, but no definition for that either.
UNCO is short for UNCONFIRMED, the state a bug is in between being filed and being rejected because its asking for something a general user would want.
Re: (Score:2)
Depends, were there 13k bugs or was that 13k bug reports. Often times you can nominally reduce the number significantly by going through and merging or closing duplicate reports and get a seemingly significant reduction in bugs without changing any code.
Also, many of them may have been related to code which is no longer present in Firefox.
Re: (Score:2)
13k unconfirmed bug reports.
Almost certainly fewer than 13k bugs in those.
Re: (Score:2)
But Id like a clarification-- if there were 13,000 bugs 15 months ago, and now there are 6000, doesnt that speak to massive improvement? Why not leave back in spring 2010?
IIRC, most of the decrease was because they automatically closed old, unconfirmed (UNCO) bugs that weren't being worked on. Which sent the same message to the people who took the time to file the reports that Tyler Downer decries: "Thank you for filing a bug report with us. We donâ(TM)t really care about it" or about your time.
Re: (Score:3)
Number like that mean absolutely NOTHING. It MAY be that 7000 bugs have been solved in a proper way by one or more developers who has either committed a fix or closed the bug if it objectively does not indicate a problem with Firefox. Unfortunately, it is just as likely that the 7000 bugs have been closed by bug triagers obsessing over the
Re:Before the flames begin... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Before the flames begin... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
UNCO is unconfirmed but it uses a lot of time (Score:3)
Basically, bugs have a lifecycle [bugzilla.org] - they may start out UNCOnfirmed, move to confirmed, then in progress, then resolved and finally rest in verified.
I used to do volunteer triage for Mozilla back in 2000 (folks like Gerv, Timeless and Asa probably don't remember me though ;). I even have an old out of date page called kill-unco [sucs.org].
However the reality is that there a lot of people filing bugs at a rate that is very high. Generally speaking there are not enough people to look at bugs at the best of times and this
This problem has infected so many FOSS projects (Score:5, Insightful)
Firefox gets personas, syncs, tab groups, etc. instead of bug fixes.
GNOME3.
Unity.
Version number treadmills.
Ad nauseam.
Change for the sake of change. Bleeding edge bullet points for the bloggers instead of bugfixes for the users.
How about returning to our roots and building software which runs faster with less bugs. There are plenty of commercial options for those who want the glassy artwork and UI equivalent of smooth jazz.
How about software for people who need to get things done.
Remember when we took pride in something like Apache being vastly superior to IIS? Now the community seems to hang its head in shame that Mac has spiffier icons and a hipper dock or Chrome gets new version numbers on a faster schedule.
Re: (Score:2)
A gift to Microsoft or Google? (Score:2)
Has anybody told Captain Smith there's an iceberg ahead?
I guess Firefox has chosen to hand it's considerable market share back over to MS. Many users who left IE over the countless bugs and security issues. The benefit of switching to Mozilla/Firefox is quickly evaporating with each half-assed bug filled release. Plug in hell. Run away memory usage. Unpleasant GUI changes. Change for the sake of change.
So will users flee to Chrome or will gravity pull them back to IE?
Most likely Google (Score:2)
Sad, but for the first time since the mid-nineties when I started using Netscape, I'm considering switching. That includes the Netscape6, pre 1.0 Mozilla days.
None of my plugins work and I'm asked to install and upgrade major versions every few weeks it seems.
Microsoft has the nasty habit of tying their Browser releases to their OS sales. That's why you won't be able to install IE 10 to Vista, or IE 9 to XP. Also, they don't backport the render engine as a middle ground. How about an IE 8.5 that has mu
Re: (Score:2)
Anonymous Coward is Coward (Score:3)
>> "Please stop pretending that Firefox is some piss-poor, bug-addled, sub-standard product..."
I'm not pretending. Did you RTFA? The head of bug triage quit because mozilla isn't managing bug fixes. It's a pretty damning statement from someone in the loop.
>> "And please stop pretending that most people will drop it just because a shiny new toy comes around.. they won't."
I've been a Mozilla/Firefox user since it became available on Linux. IIRC that was shortly after my first distro RedHat 5.1
So long, Debbie (Score:3)
We currently have 2,598 UNCO bugs in Firefox that haven’t been touched in 150 days. That is almost 2600 bugs that have not been touched since Firefox 4 was released. ... In Spring 2010, we hit roughly 13,000 UNCO bugs in the Firefox product on BMO. 13,000!!! We currently have 5,934.
In a related story, from this point forward "Debbie Downer" is no longer the correct pseudonym for an overtly depressing person. Hereafter, that person shall be cited as "Tyler Downer".
All hail our new horribly sad overlord.
Re: (Score:2)
"UNCO" - UNCOnfirmed status, the default status for bug when it's added to the bugzilla tracker before it's triaged.
BMO - Just shorthand for "bugzilla.mozilla.org"
Maybe we know why (Score:2)
As 13 years are not enough to handle a major bug [mozilla.org].
They are focusing on HTML5 (which is not a standard but a draft) and leave HTML4 implementation with all existing bugs.
They think that all web pages will be rewritten in HTML5 as soon as it will land as real standard. It will instead take years.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem with that bug is that the HTML 4 requirement in question is not really consistent with the CSS layout model.
So you can have that HTML feature or you can have CSS applying to your HTML, but not both. Your pick. Most people seem to have picked CSS.
I'm still getting updates 6 years later... (Score:2)
While not directly related to Firefox, I submitted a bug for Thunderbird's import mechanism about 6-12 months post launch. Every year or so I get someone else posting to this still outstanding issue...
Bug fixes/support, the achilles heal of FOSS. Where are these folks who want to maintain existing software? Paging all autistic OCD programmers!
-rt
Re: (Score:2)
It's not just a FOSS issue. There are bugs throughout commercial software that never get fixed. They usually promise that it will be fixed with the next release, though often it never does, but you've paid $6k a seat, so you build a workaround.
Re: (Score:2)
So true, there are major issue that can be found in every single version of windows from 95 to 7 (and maybe even before, I have not checked).
Re: (Score:2)
My *critical* top100 bug from 2002-02-07 is still opened.
Assigned To: Nobody; OK to take it and work on it
Nice
No Fun = No Code (Score:2)
It is only natural that with open source bugs gather less volunteer enthusiasm. Ask any programmer and I doubt they enjoy squashing bugs over implementing new features. Debugging is the grunge work, or rather, the toilet cleaning of coding, yet it can also be the hardest part, requiring your very best resources.
With that said, IE sucks the worse. Just imagine how many bugs IE would have if they had the same bug reporting system? "Our software has bugs, we don't care, and we are sitting on billions of dollar
Re: (Score:3)
Some Clarification. (Score:5, Informative)
Some questions (Score:2)
Hey Tyler,
I have some questions:
What? (Score:5, Funny)
>In Spring 2010, we hit roughly 13,000 UNCO bugs in the Firefox product on BMO.
Don't blame this shit on me.
--
BMO
So true (Score:2)
There are bugs that where introduced back when I was still in high school like 5-6 years ago that I am still waiting on.
firefox seems feature complete (Score:2)
Goal is great software, not closing bugs (Score:4, Interesting)
Mozilla's objective should be to release great software, not to close bug reports. In fact, if they can release the software while touching fewer bug reports, that's more efficient.
The problem is that Mozilla continues to be careless about setting their community's expectations (on other issues too). They solicit bug reports from people, who invest time and effort in reporting, testing, following up, and even patching -- but then Mozilla does nothing with the bugs. It's disrespectful to use people's time like that.
Mozilla needs to set expectations clearly from the start: Feel free to report it, triage it, patch it, etc., but realize that most bug reports are never implemented.
Is Google deliberately destroying Mozilla? (Score:2)
Is this push for more features, more releases, and lower quality coming from the people Google has working on Mozilla? Google has an incentive to migrate people to Chrome, where they define and control the platform.
Dear Microsoft... (Score:2)
Okay, we get it now. Being a leading browser is a huge deal, and it's a massive thing just to keep up with the bug reports, much less the bugs themselves.
Too many open bugs? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know of a troll who files bug reports just to piss people off; last time he tried to claim an About window displaying the same information as every other GUI app in existence is "a bug and confusing people". Maybe you should ban people like him from the system, just saying.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sounds like the PHP dev team... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I was recently pissed off again by Gedit refusing to load my text file because it contains a control character, and when I checked the Gnome bugzilla I discovered that had been logged as a bug in 2004 and still isn't fixed. Given that it's incredibly dumb and should just require an option to _not_ refuse to a load a file just because it contains control characters, I'm amazed that it's been able to sit there for seven years without someone fixing the damn thing.
Then again, there's Gnome 3. So maybe I should
Bug bounty (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd be curious to see what the numbers are for bug fixes submitted by people being paid to fix bugs and those being submitted by people that just want to make the OS better. And really for various open source projects.
Chances are good that most bugs are being fixed by programmers that are annoyed by the bugs or are being paid to do it. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with it, bug fixing can be incredibly time consuming and ultimately most users probably won't notice. Chances are that if they do n
Re: (Score:2)
RESOLVED WORKSFORME