Re: New bug handling policy ?

You wrote:

> Hi folks,
> 
> What happens is that bugs accumulate during the feature development 
> phase of a release, then during stabilization the engineers go through 
> the backlog of issues and evaluate. And yes they are under tremendous 
> pressure to reach our quality thresholds

Closing problems for sport /does not equal/ reaching quality thresholds
for any serious company. Actually, that stinks of dishonesty bordering on
fraud. If you pulled that stunt with paying customers you soon wouldn't have
any. Ain't open source grand?! Hey Dave, I just closed 100 issues today!
Where's that raise you promised me?

> You have to understand there is no "sustaining" department at Oracle. 

You said a mouthful there, buddy. And with attitudes like yours, there won't
ever be.

> There is no team whose explicit job it is to evaluate bugs as they come 
> in and only pass the valid, actionable bugs to the engineers. So please 
> be patient with us as we try to manage the large task of implementing 
> compelling new features along with responding to the mountains of user 
> feedback in the bug tracking system and on the mailing lists.

What is the point of implementing new features when bugs are outstanding?
Seems like some manager's ass ought to be in a serious sling. Maybe the team
from Thunderbird is handling your support staff?

> Emilian is correct, however. If a bug is incomplete or cannot be 
> reproduced, it will be closed as Incomplete or Invalid.

What about returning it to the person who opened it so they can provide
whatever information you need, or help you reproduce it? If you don't get a
response in a fixed time (let's say 2 weeks rather than your current 1 1/2
seconds) then you could reasonably close it. That's the way normal software
companies work. Emphasis on "normal." That doesn't seem to include
Whoreacle. Then again, you don't get to be one of the biggest by doing
business honestly, do you buddy? You have to be tough to stay on top!

> Simply reopen it with more details if this happens to you. 

Oh, so the first couple of times somebody reports something you're not sure
if he really means it? So you close it a bunch of times just to see if the
guy was serious without checking whether there actually is a bug or some
kind of issue. And if he keeps reopening it then you will grudgingly admit
there might be a problem after all? Just so we understand..

> But please, if the developer decides that the bug is one we will not fix
> or that the current behavior is as designed, don't just reopen the bug
> repeatedly. This doesn't help anyone.

But according to you, there is no way to distinguish this case, because the
default when somebody doesn't want to work on something is to simply close
it for, well, you know, for quality reasons, or if it's 5:29 and there are
still open bugs in the list. Gotta go! (click click click click..)

> Thanks again,

No, thank you! That was the best shit-eating manager's explanation of
process I've seen in a couple of weeks. I'm sure you'll go places!

Have a nice day, ya hump!