Ever used BugZilla? I’m sure you have. Frustrated? Dropped support for ever? Oh yes, I understand.Many projects use bug trackers under which BugZilla is a famous choice. Once invented to help the Mozilla team out of its maintenance nightmare it made its way into user support. Some projects do not even provide a user mailinglist anymore. Everything is to be written into the BugZilla engine, even if it’s not a bug but an idea, a comment or just a congratulation to the great product.
However, BugZilla wasn’t made for that. It is not a support engine but a bug tracker. The user is forced to fill out complex forms with some unclear or just off topic questions only to receive an automated confirmation and wait. After some weeks, possibly, he receives another cryptic report only to find that somebody has changed the status of the bug message to “Not Replicable” or “Removed”. No further word, no address of a person to discuss the case with. Is it completely wrong if one suspects that some projects push BugZilla to front intentionally to hide behind undisturbed.
Some time ago I’d posted a bug message to the BugZilla engine of the Mozilla project. A message dropped into my mailbox telling me that the bug message were a duplicate of another bug message. I compared the two messages and found that they were about very different subjects. The other bug message had already two other so called duplicates appended which weren’t. Because there was no other way to contact the maintainer I opened a new bug message in which I argued about the different subjects of the four so called duplicates. My message was removed because “It includes four bug messages. Please send only one bug per message”.
I reopened the message and asked the maintainer if he’d even read it. The message was removed again because of the same reason as before. I opened a new bug message and posted the same text in the hope that it would be read by another maintainer but the same maintainer removed my message and complained about my stubborness. I started a discussion through the BugZilla engine and asked him if he could forward the message to some other maintainer if he’s not willing to look at the case. He refused to do so. I got somewhat angry and told him my opinion about his practice. He argued that he was only a volunteering assistant and not involved into the project. So, if he’s only an assistant, he could’ve forwarded my pledge to a maintainer, I wrote. But he still refused to do so. I decided to stop supporting mozilla for ever. The error remained untouched for two further releases.
This is not worth it. BugZilla shows no pay off for the user, it only supports the developer. You may argue that the user is supported indirectly when the bug is resolved. However, the user needs some address to discuss details with. Mailinglists or user forums are better places for that because many users and developers can discuss the case together. While this is theoretically possible with BugZilla others first have to intentionally detect the bug message (before it’s removed) which is unlikely in an ever growing bug tracker.
I’ve posted a bug message to the OpenSSH BugZilla engine. Except the confirmation I received nothing for about half a year. Two new releases produced the same error which hindered me to install OpenSSH from source. I sent a new bug message with same content. Again I received nothing for about half a year. I was frustrated because OpenSSH is not a simple game but a critical part of my platform that I wasn’t able to update. I posted further requests, appended as comments to the existing bug message, but got no reply. Because there was no other contact address available I posted another bug message in that I complained about the project support. Suddenly about fifteen developers spammed my mailbox with uncensored comments. One only wrote that the GPL doesn’t guarantee support. Ahh? I answered that support isn’t even mentioned in the GPL and fully left to the project. And, there I asked for support and complained about it. He only repeated his opinion. As somebody was about sending me the whole X Window System as email appendix I skipped the discussion and switched to lsh.
For all this stress I had to create a user account. Because so many projects have forced me to create accounts I even had to create a separate passwords folder in my email client (yes, I know that browsers remember passwords but refuse to use this function!).
Over time, learning my lessons and still getting requests to messages I’ve posted last year, I moved over to refuse supporting a project that misuses BugZilla as a support engine or asks me to register. This may sound ignorant but I refuse to waste hours, if not days, for decrypting BugZilla reports, talking to assistbots and struggling with misunderstood developers without the chance for a productive contact to a friendly environment of human beings. Though this is not guaranteed by mailinglists or forums either, these platforms seem to evolve a different, more open and mature character over time. I definetly pledge for more projects following the example and banning BugZilla from the support area. It should only be used for real bug messages, and even then there must be another way to discuss these bugs if the nature of the problem needs more involvement or audience.
About the Author:
The author, Dennis Heuer, is a 34-years old german social scientist concentrating on human-computer-interaction (HCI) and e-learning.
@ AdamW:
> stop twisting things. no-one brought up that kind of
> boilerplate disclaimer as an excuse.
robUx4, posting #48.
> Someone else pointed out that that type of boilerplate
> disclaimer is common to virtually all software, open
> source and commercial alike.
I’ve seen the same disclaimer in Freeware and Shareware for decades, but those dudes at least took some *pride* in their craftmanship, and actually were *happy* when I mailed them bug reports or feature requests. (Which doesn’t necessarily mean they agreed, or fixed the thing, but one and all they were friendly and *responsive* about it.)
I see that attitude deteriorating ever since the GPL hype struck. “Works for me”, “fix it yourself and send me the patch” or “I owe you nothing” is a poser’s way of reply. Not replying at all is worse.
This is about the worst article that I have ever read on OSNews.
To compare Bugzilla with Developers that use Bugzilla is like saying:
“Democracy sucks! Look at the last 4 years with Bush in office! It must be Democracy that is to blame!”
And to publically try to bash other developers for the way they handled some bug that he submitted…
I have no words for that.
—
In response to:
“After some weeks, possibly, he receives another cryptic report only to find that somebody has changed the status of the bug message to “Not Replicable” or “Removed”. ”
Not every developer will walk everything through for some idiot. I’ve seen so many posts about “A bug” – that is just bullshit and instead of writting a long story about why the user submitted a bullshit report, it is simply ignored and removed. Also, so many people post “a bug” without searching for it first.
—
“I opened a new bug message in which I argued about the different subjects of the four so called duplicates. My message was removed because “It includes four bug messages. Please send only one bug per message”.”
This guy didn’t even know how to post a comment! Well, this explains a LOT. Message to the editor: If your so dumb that you can’t file a bug, just don’t file any PLEASE. You will waste everyone’s time (Yours as well as the poor developer who has to deal with your shit).
—-
Ever wonder why this guy didn’t point out the exact URLs regarding the bugs that he was talking about?
This guy is obviously too ashamed… since someone else will tell him why they were in fact the same bug.
—
In regards to QA in Open Source projects, I agree – there is a problem with it. BUT, that is only for the small / medium sized projects. The ones @ the Apache Foundation or @ the Mozilla Project DO NOT have this problem. 75-80% of the stuff on SourceForge sucks (because most projects are exactly like another project or they are not developed yet or the whole idea sucks). You can’t blame that on Open source though.
Best Regards,
– Mick
I was the one who closed his OpenSSH bug.
FYI here is his bug report on OpenSSH. He did not go “half a year” without a reply. The bug log clearly shows he received a reply within a month. When it became clear that his problem was with his system libraries and not with OpenSSH, he became abusive.
http://bugzilla.mindrot.org/show_bug.cgi?id=194
Bugzilla is not a forum for general system support, it is a tool for developers to track and fix bugs. Go use a mailing list…
The bug message was already posted in a comment above, like the mozilla bugs.
You’ve got things messed up. First, as you can read in the bug message, I was already without OpenSSH for a year. I tried to find the first message but couldn’t even find bug #194 through the bugzilla search form (entering libutil as search key for example). I am definetly too stupid for bugzilla, but that really doesn’t disturb me because it’s a mess. Maybe you find it.
Second, I didn’t get “abusive” because of what you write but because some people were “helpful” without having read the bug message. As I pledged for reading the whole message, somebody came up with this “volunteering” story that is already discussed enough here in the comments. He supports or not, everything between that is only robbing time and nerves.
Third, you should read my comment #14 to see what already had happened outside the bug message and how I clearly differ between the guys “trying to help” me.
Fourth, you too did not get the message of the article because it is not about bugzilla, the software, but about how it is for someone not involved to reach a goal through bugzilla.
Fifth:
“Bugzilla is not a forum for general system support, it is a tool for developers to track and fix bugs. Go use a mailing list…”
That’s what my article was about, if you read it again. To answer directly: That time, I’ve tried to find a mailinglist but the portable OpenSSH project seemed to always guide me to the official OpenSSH bugzilla from any place. I was able to find bugzilla from everywhere on the project site, but an appropriate mailinglist I wasn’t able to find at all. This is why I was stucked with bugzilla and, as I wrote, for a year.
>With such ungrateful users, it’s no wonder some developers
>are so thorny.
You forget about one thing. If the user investigates into a software that seems to be important and well maintained (trustful) and it doesn’t work for him (after spending some hours and possibly some money because of an old analogue connection to the internet) there is really nothing he can thank for. Some wrote that users should thank the developers for their greatness. They seem to look at volunteering like at spending blood. However, if a developer wants to be praised he must first develop the appropriate software and service.
That the user tries to get support is a natural thing. That he doesn’t know what the developer wants or needs to know is a natural thing as well. Most escalation occurs afterwards, if the discussion is fruitless and the developer seems to be of the ignorant type.