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by fao_ 1955 days ago
> Most Gnome developers, I suppose, are on RedHat payroll and are not teenage.

jwz was not talking about the age, he was talking about the issue of ignoring bugs to the point where they reach decades old, and often even then persist and go unfixed. Some bugs live multiple decades, across three different issue trackers, having to be reopened each time.

The fun fact is that he wrote this in 2003, about the GNOME developers. Not much has changed in 20 years, it seems.

https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html
1 comments
locke78 1955 days ago
This article has so little substance that I wish people would stop re-posting it. It adds nothing to the discussion. Like yeah, there are bug reports that haven't been addressed. Developers come and go and sometimes have to leave before they get to work out all the bugs in their feature(s). It happens. Every big open source project is like that. The bug tracker is open so that anyone can submit bug reports. The downside is that it tends to fill up with unsolicited bug reports that don't get responses. The upside is that anyone in or outside the project can volunteer to fix any of those bugs. I don't see JWZ stepping up to triage random bugs in GNOME, probably because he knows it's a thankless job with no pay that he wouldn't enjoy.
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fao_ 1955 days ago
> I don't see JWZ stepping up to triage random bugs in GNOME, probably because he knows it's a thankless job with no pay that he wouldn't enjoy.

Thing about it is, it's the responsibility of the GNOME project. It's the responsibility of the developers that sign up to it. Each time GNOME has been improved, old problems still persist. It says something about a project and the integrity of the developers when they claim to increase usability and yet do not bother with longstanding problems.

The root of the problem is a certain mindset to development. One that is numerous and yet flawed.

"Move fast, break things! No time to fix them we have other concerns like- checks notes- revising every system menu to look slightly different. Hell yeah!! Wooh!"

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nine_k 1955 days ago
The idea of "unsolicited bug reports" is lovely.
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fao_ 1953 days ago
Exactly, what about unsolicited bugs?
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