Re: What is wrong with Bugzilla? [Was: Re: GCC and Floating-Point]

[Scott Robert Ladd <scott dot ladd at coyotegulch dot com>]

Uros Bizjak wrote:
> At this point, I wonder what is wrong with Bugzilla, that those 
> programmers don't fill a proper bug report.

In my experience, people don't file Bugzilla reports because it feels
impersonal and unresponsive. The form is not very user-friendly (as in
friendly to users of GCC, not its developers.)

I have some thoughts on GCC customer support that would likely help both
developers and users, but I need to get my ducks in a row before I start
them quacking.

> I guess that these persons don't know that bugreports are extremmely
>  important for the development of gcc. The users themself are
> actaully a QA department of open source development;)

Asking users to do QA makes for poor relationships and quality, whether
we're talking about proprietary or free software. Ask anyone who
purchased a game like Dungeon Lords... ;)

Now, you can argue that people's expectations are unrealistic, and I
will agree with you, but we all know that the ideal situation is
only rarely reflected in reality.

>> However, the atmosphere of GCC development is... well, let's just 
>> say that my investment in asbestos underware has not been wasted. 
>> ;)
>> 
> I would call it an atmosphere of brainstorming. Different opinions 
> and different point of views. The only problem is, that words can be
>  different if people sit 3000 km/miles/whatever apart ;)

Brainstorming there may be, but certain folk in the GCC community simply
like being annoying, perhaps to feed their own sense of self-importance.
It is quite possible to disagree with someone without be disagreeable,
as exemplified by Evandro Menezes recently.

..Scott