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Re: interpretation of wontfix



Quoting Simon McVittie (2018-03-28 13:01:19)
> On Wed, 28 Mar 2018 at 12:17:37 +0200, Andreas Tille wrote:
> > I think "wontfix" is exactly the feature of the BTS that was 
> > invented to solve the problem I described.  The bug is not closed 
> > and remains listed - so everybody is free to ignore that tag and 
> > close the bug.
> 
> Is this how most people interpret wontfix? I'd usually interpreted it 
> as an indication of policy rather than priority: "I acknowledge that 
> this is a bug, but it isn't going to change, even if you provide a 
> patch". For instance, if there's a design flaw that people are now 
> relying on, such that correcting the design flaw would cause 
> regressions that are at least as bad as the design flaw itself, then 
> that's an ideal use for my interpretation of wontfix.
> 
> In Bugzilla, WONTFIX and its cousins NOTABUG and NOTOURBUG are 
> resolutions, not tags (you use them by closing a bug as RESOLVED 
> WONTFIX instead of RESOLVED FIXED), which suggests that my 
> interpretation matches that of Bugzilla's designers; but perhaps the 
> wontfix tag in the Debian BTS was meant to mean something different?
> 
> I would tend to use the help tag, not the wontfix tag, for bugs where 
> I don't intend to work on the bug myself but I'd consider applying a 
> patch (including porting to non-release architectures).

That sounds like a similar confusion over severity - often interpreted 
by bugreporters as tied to the bugreporter, where we kindly inform that 
it is meant to reflect the distribution as a whole:

Seems the logic of Bugzilla (and Debian?) is that "wontfix is intended 
to be tied to the distribution as a whole, not the (current) maintainer 
of a package.

That logic makes sense to me, but I have personally interpreted it as 
tied to me as maintainer.

I would support simply adding a note to the documentation of our 
bugtracker that "wontfix" is tied to the project as a whole (which still 
leaves room for strongly opinionated maintainers to interpret that as 
"hell yeah, I hate that and I choose to speak for us all in hating that, 
so WONTFIX you go!"


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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