On Tuesday 2013-12-03 21:15 -0800, Lawrence Mandel wrote: > I'm taking a stronger stance and suggesting that we should be able to wontfix > bugs that likely aren't worth anyone's time or attention. As a concrete > example, what is the value in keeping the following bugs open?
> bug 3246 - Core::Layout:Block and Inline P3 opened 14 years 9 months ago I don't think this should be wontfixed; it's a valid bug, and I think worth fixing, although as part of other architectural changes. I'd like to be able to use Bugzilla to track the known issues in our code rather than being forced to copy all the data into code comments. (At least, I sometimes would. Other times I'd rather use a version control system for tracking bugs.) > In fact, there at 6925 bugs across all Bugzilla products currently > in the new or unconfirmed state that were opened more than 10 > years ago. I would assert that if a bug hasn't been fixed in 10 > years it probably isn't important enough to spend time on now. We > can always reopen or refile if the issue becomes more pressing (by > anyone's judgement). I don't think that's true; both priorities and costs really do change over time. A good example of priorities changing over time is https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=63895 . When filed, we may have been the only Web layout engine advanced enough for it to make sense to report the bug; today all the others have caught up and we're the only one with the bug. I also think the idea that you should wontfix bugs as a function of age just leads to messing with the bugs of components that have been around for a long time. See also http://dbaron.org/log/20080515-age-of-bugs . And it sends a bad message to the people who are interested in seeing those components improve, reporting and commenting in bugs, etc. Many of these old bugs are actually bugs that people care about, and that Web developers stumble into frequently. Some of them also contain useful information about how to fix the problem described -- information that wouldn't necessarily be there if they were wontfixed and new bugs filed. I tend to think we should be putting more effort into some of them than we currently are. (If there's a valid aging threshold, I think it's bugs that have been around long enough that they've shipped in a release. I think it's a meaningful threshold because it proves they weren't bad enough that we had to fix them in order to ship. But I think it's far from saying they should be wontfixed.) -David -- 𝄞 L. David Baron http://dbaron.org/ 𝄂 𝄢 Mozilla https://www.mozilla.org/ 𝄂 Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offense. - Robert Frost, Mending Wall (1914)
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