From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jan 18 19:03:17 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 38D5F1065673 for ; Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:03:17 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from mwm@mired.org) Received: from mail-iy0-f196.google.com (mail-iy0-f196.google.com [209.85.210.196]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 02FE08FC0A for ; Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:03:16 +0000 (UTC) Received: by iagz16 with SMTP id z16so1136518iag.7 for ; Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:03:16 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.50.181.197 with SMTP id dy5mr23688381igc.13.1326913396630; Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:03:16 -0800 (PST) Received: from mikmeyer-vm-fedora (dhcp-173-37-11-196.cisco.com. [173.37.11.196]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id r18sm91937332ibh.4.2012.01.18.11.03.15 (version=SSLv3 cipher=OTHER); Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:03:16 -0800 (PST) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 11:02:35 -0800 From: Mike Meyer To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20120118110235.0dbbf8ed@mikmeyer-vm-fedora> In-Reply-To: <4F170623.4080006@freebsd.org> References: <4F15C44F.1030208@freebsd.org> <1326836797.1669.234.camel@revolution.hippie.lan> <4F16019F.2060300@FreeBSD.org> <1326843399.1669.249.camel@revolution.hippie.lan> <4F160B99.1060001@FreeBSD.org> <4F16900A.90905@FreeBSD.org> <4F170623.4080006@freebsd.org> Organization: Meyer Consulting X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.7.10 (GTK+ 2.24.7; i386-redhat-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Bug triage (Was: FreeBSD has serious problems with focus, longevity, and lifecycle) X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:03:18 -0000 On Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:49:23 -0800 Julian Elischer wrote: > On 1/18/12 3:32 AM, Robert Watson wrote: > > > > Another possibility is to get some combination of {The FreeBSD > > Foundation, iX Systems, ...} to trawl the bug report database in a > > more official capacity. The problem there is that this will be a > > high burn-out job. I'll bring it up at the next Foundation board > > meeting, especially after a bumper year of fund-raising, and see > > what we can do. > we really need a bug-submitting-user advocate.. The word you're looking for here is "triage". One of the two common denominators of the good support organizations I've worked with is good triage (the other is good metrics). > Someone (need not have a commit bit) who doesn't take charge of the > patch, but, rather, > acts as a project manager in the process of getting it in. > i.e. finding, and then pinging the approriate developer, and > occasionally nagging them or > finding an alternate dev if the first choice is unresponsive. > > diplomatic skill would be important.. maybe a woman might be best in > this job as the developers tend to not want to be rude to women :-) . Actually, there's a second half to this that you're overlooking. The person doing this job should make sure the PR's have everything the developer needs before they assign them to a developer. I suspect the devs would be a lot more responsive if they could actually work on the bug, and not have to explain that "this is a feature, not a bug", or reproducing it to verify that it's not a user problem, or walking the submitter through the process of getting a core dump, etc. Which also calls for diplomatic skills. Ok, could one of the bugmeisters provide a count of # of bug submissions/day for the last year, or some such? Thanks,