Requesting a change to the BugStatusWorkFlow: Closed/UPSTREAM

[Stephen Gallagher]

For the record, I am referencing
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/BugStatusWorkFlow#CLOSED

Currently, the official bug lifecycle includes the following phrase:
"The resolution UPSTREAM can be used by maintainers to denote a bug that
they expect to be fixed by upstream development and naturally rolled
back into Fedora as part of the update process. Ideally, a comment
should be added with a link to the upstream bug report."

I've seen quite a few bugs lately closed with this resolution (mostly in
the Evolution and GNOME projects for me personally). It seems to me that
this is terribly useless in terms of informing users when their bugs are
fixed.

Essentially, when closing this bug as UPSTREAM, we are communicating to
our users "This will get fixed. Probably. And it will get pulled into
Fedora eventually. Probably." Most people, when they can actually be
convinced to file a real bug report (even through ABRT), are doing so
because they have an issue with the software and want to know when it's
fixed.

Closing things upstream requires that the reporters (who already likely
had to be coaxed to file a bug in the first place) now also have to
manually choose to go and create an account on an unrelated bug tracker
if they want to follow along on the resolution of the issue.
Furthermore, it makes it very difficult for the developer working on the
problem to communicate with the original reporter.

I feel that it really should be the responsibility of the package
maintainer to keep tickets open in Fedora until upstream produces a
release that fixes them. This way, the maintainer at least can act to
coordinate requests for additional information to and from upstream.

So I propose that we should remove the above language from the
BugStatusWorkFlow page and eliminate the UPSTREAM resolution from our
vocabulary. Yes, it's results in marginally more work for the package
maintainer, but I think that it's a worthwhile goal to avoid
discouraging users from filing bugs.

I know I'm getting tired of filing bugs on projects that I know are
never going to inform me when it's fixed. I don't much enjoy wondering
if the next yum update with the non-descriptive summary "New upstream
release 1.1.2" will just happen to include the fix I am waiting for.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and counter-arguments.
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