[winteriscoming]

Having been part of projects that grew large over time and are composed of too many components, I understand why this is done. It reaches a point where you can't go to each open issue and see whether it's still relevant in the context of all the new and different technical changes that would have gone in during that period.

That mail does seem to point to a place where users can report this afresh if it's still relevant. So, not a bad approach, to get these bug reports to hopefully in a more relevant and manageable state.

[blitzd]

They do this for bugs that are easily reproducible on all versions of these products as well.

I received a similar response to a bug report a few years back, it had been open for a couple of years without even being acknowledged, then one day they decided to close it with a form letter listing possible reasons. People continued to upvote it, and finally 3 1/2 years after it was filed it finally got fixed. No interaction from anyone at MS other than the form response, and the final status change. I've filed about a dozen bugs reports on connect - and this is one of the few 'success' stories, sadly.

User engagement at MS is very broken.

[Piskvorrr]

That's quite possibly what they're saying. On the other hand, this is what I hear: "We don't care about bugs, ignored them anyway, and now we'll pretend there aren't any. If you want to go through this cycle again, and see the bugs ignored again, file them again. We dare you!"

In other words, bugtracker bankruptcy is never nice, and the risk of discouraging users from filing bugs is significant.

[ianderf]

No, it's a totally wrong apporach. It's your work that you are paid for, and nobody is ought to make your work for free.