Sean Whitton writes ("Re: interpretation of wontfix"):
> On Wed, Mar 28 2018, Simon McVittie wrote:
...
> I think it would be useful to have your opinions on this, as originators
> (at different points in history) of the current set of BTS tags.
Thanks for asking me, but I don't think I have much useful historical
context to add. If I had anything to do with the tags, my influence
(and any coherent rationale that might have been behind it) is long
gone.
Considering the question de novo: we have two uses for `wontfix'. One
means `lack of effort' or `too difficult' (which are really two sides
or the same coin) and the other is `changing this would actually make
things worse'. The docs currently document only the latter meaning,
although they do leave the door open by saying `other reasons'.
I often find myself wishing for some tags which relate
to how soon we intende to deal with a bug. It would be possible to
use usertags for this but I think something shared would be more
useful.
Perhaps
soon
The maintainers intend to fix this bug quickly, probably in the
next upload to Debian unstable.
[ I find myself using a browser tab on my laptop for this, which
is distinctly suboptimal. ]
deferred
The maintainers lack the effort to work on this bug in the
foreseeable future.
Contributions to help progress this bug would be welcome, and a
correct fix would be accepted. But, the maintainers advise
that working on other bugs may be an easier way of making
bigger improvements to Debian.
If significant progress is made on the bug, a contributor
should unset this tag to ask the maintainers to reassess the
situation.
deferred-CODENAME
The maintainers lack the effort to to work on this bug, and
this is not likely to change before the release of CODENAME.
(Like `deferred', but with an explicit timescale.)
?
We could replace `wontfix' meaning `this bug is too hard' with
`deferred'.
Ian.
