On 2016-10-10 16:54, Svetlana Tkachenko wrote:
Good day,
For components as large as Firefox, I unfortunately cannot read each issue report before
deciding to use it. There are apparently 7350 open "bugs" reported against
Firefox (which excludes some components). Does that mean there are 7350 reported
Firefox-specific issues which persist, or 5 times more, since most persisting issues are
marked as resolved?
1) Mozilla closes bugs which it considers invalid (the issue does not
exist).
2) Mozilla closes bugs whose maintenance burden is considered
unacceptable compared to the defects the bug itself imposes.
Mozilla's bug tracker is not for tracking all Firefox issues which exist
on the planet. It is only for tracking work which Mozilla is ready to
maintain after the volunteer does it and (if we're unlucky) disappears.
- For example, bug 805073 means a need to maintain documentation,
workingness of the feature, licence list, reviewers effort to verify the
licence, and having someone around who wants to fix new bugs related to
this feature. This is a lot of effort and Mozilla is not obligated to
undertake it.
- For example, the GNU IceCat project does some Firefox-related work to
cut out proprietary features. While this work is Firefox-related, it is
not tracked in Mozilla's bug tracker, because Mozilla has no interest in
working on these issues itself. An exception is when IceCat folks would
like to request a new Firefox feature to make their fork easier to
maintain, or unless they discover a Firefox bug which nobody else
reported yet.
Luckily, Mozilla tries to prioritize issues which look valid and
important, and its judgment is usually reasonable.
Luckily, Mozilla allows anyone can comment and vote on bugs to
demonstrate logical points and number of users concerned by the bug.
This is usually achieved by being articulative and by other users
bumping into the bug and commenting or voting on it.
Sorry, the above statistics did include all of BMO's "bugs", which indeed
include mere RFE-s (wishlist issues), and that case is more debatable. More importantly,
these were statistics for Thunderbird, not Firefox; sorry about that too.
But if we stick to actual Thunderbird bugs, we still have 5498 reports. If we
have to multiply by 5, that makes a difference of about 20000 reported bugs. If
I consider using, promoting or contributing to a MUA, my decision is quite
likely to be different depending on whether that MUA has 20 000 reported bugs
more or 20 000 less.
[...]
--
Filipus Klutiero
http://www.philippecloutier.com
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