[Mageia-discuss] Think about bugzilla monitoring?

[Michael Scherer]

Le samedi 25 septembre 2010 à 13:19 +0200, Wolfgang Bornath a écrit :
> 2010/9/25 Michael Scherer <misc at zarb.org>:
> >
> > So to conclude, as arrogant and elitist it will sound, the best way for
> > everybody to have a bug fixed is to fix it yourself.
> 
> This is neither arrogant nor elitist, it is logical thinking. But at
> the same time it is unrealistic, as a lot of logical thinking is. :(

I didn't say the goal was attainable, I quite explicitly said the
contrary in fact :)

> Only a small percentage of users is able to write a good bug report,
> much less users would be able to squash the simplest of bugs (like
> fixing a broken dependency in a package, broken by a typo of the
> packager or similar). 

Then we need to grow this number. And for us, the first step to grow it
requires us to think positively ( ie, say that users can, instead of
saying "no, most of them won't, so we should not bother them" ), and
maybe to prioritize about those who do the first step toward
contribution ( now, that should sound elitist ).


> As we have already said here we first need
> people who help other people writing bug reports - this may be
> possible for a certain percentage of users, for others it may not
> because they may not care.

Indeed, helping would be a first step. 

It will not solve the problem soon, but we shouldn't be defeatist saying
"people will never be able to learn". Most of them can at least learn
enough to understand. Maybe not how to fix bugs. Maybe not how to report
bugs. But at least, they can learn why it take time, and why their bugs
are not fixed yet. 

A little bit of comprehension can surely do a lot to reduce frustration
as expressed by Juergen Harms.

And some of them can become indeed contributors.
 
I knew Nicolas Lecureil before he had any kind of alias on any kind of
project, and have seen how he learned all its way up from a non tech
related job and studies to become the kde chief we all know.

He is the living proof this can happen. And he is not the only one in
our community.

> What you are talking about is the user who is already committed to be
> involved, the community which is discussing here and elsewhere. But
> the majority of users, even in a free non-commercial environment, is
> not out for an involvement, they want to use the software.

If the previous conclusion was not elitist and arrogant enough, this one
should do the trick : Just using free software is likely to not be
sustainable enough in the long term.

Some people just want to use, that's fine. I also do. 

But I also know that I can because some others people gave their time to
make this happen. I know that not everybody want to give time to make
free software happen, because others things are more important for them
( family, other important causes, job, etc ), and that's fine too.

But to me, there is difference between not caring by lack of time, and
not caring by ignorance. 

-- 
Michael Scherer