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

[R Hill]

Daniel Berlin wrote:
> On Sun, 2005-05-29 at 16:37 +1200, Ross Smith wrote:
>>On Sunday, 29 May 2005 03:17, Uros Bizjak wrote:
>>
>>>Is perhaps some kind of anonymous account needed (as in Slashdot's
>>>case) to encourage these users to fill bugreports?
>>
>>I think this is probably the real showstopper. I'll admit I haven't 
>>exactly made a scientific survey here, but I suspect a lot of people 
>>give up when they see the login form.
> 
>>I'd bet that this is the real reason so few people file bug reports. As 
>>soon as they see the demand for an email address, alarm bells start 
>>going off in their minds, and they go away.
> 
> I've looked at the stats for those who click the "file new bug" (which
> goes to the login screen if you aren't entered) and those who submit the
> bug form, and they aren't way off from each other.
> 
> This is probably because the reason we require a valid email address on
> bug reports is because we want to communicate with the person who filed
> the bug report.
> 
> This is the same as every other bug reporting system i'm aware of that
> wants high quality reports.

I just wanted to speak up and say that the idea of alarm bells going off 
when people see a request for an email address from bugzilla is probably 
one of the sillier things I've read this week.  Anyone lucid enough to 
be reporting a bug to an open source project like GCC realizes (i hope) 
in some form how the whole internet-thing works.  If you request 
support, obviously people need a way to get in touch with you.  If 
you're looking at GCC and thinking "email-spammers@!@#$" then you may 
have more bugs than you thought. ;)

There are throwaway-email services like http://www.jetable.org and free 
email services available from many sources for the very wary.  Maybe a 
mention of that would help.

--de.