ubuntu-x-swat team mailing list archive

[Bryce Harrington <421048@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"I understand that developer resources are limited but shouldn't the bug
remain 'Confirmed' until proven otherwise?"

Indeed, that is exactly what happened, the bug remained in confirmed
state for a year and a half.

You have to understand that there are 400 bug reports against Ubuntu's X
components, with around 200 bugs filed each month.  It is very
challenging to stay atop the new bugs, let alone the old ones.
Fortunately, for natty we did in fact manage to stay more or less atop
the bug flood this go around.  You can see this from this graph:

http://www.bryceharrington.org/Arsenal/Reports/ubuntu-x-swat/totals.svg

Truly investigating bugs takes a considerable amount of time.  Deep
analysis of a bug can take days of time, and you can see from the
numbers (and like you mention in your post) we get way more requests
from people to analyze their problems than we have manpower to do.  So
we focus effort on where we can provide the best bang for the buck.
That usually translates to bugs that are confirmed as still issues with
the current version (i.e. oneiric), that either we can reproduce
ourselves or that have an active reporter who can do testing for us (and
is willing to fight for the correct status for a bug), that are severe
issues affecting a lot of people, and that we are likely going to be
able to fix.  (This latter point is why -nvidia and -fglrx bugs like
this one tend to get less priority - because they're proprietary
codebases, we fundamentally simply cannot legally or technically fix
many problems, because the car's hood is welded closed to us.)

"I think the process should be to first ask if the bug still occurs.
Then if there are no updates for some time or people can confirm that
the bug no longer exists in the newer version then the status can be
changed."

Well, basically what you describe is the process we're following here.
Maybe it feels like a "smackdown" to have it marked 'Incomplete', but
launchpad has special tracking features relating to Incomplete status,
which is why I use it - this state (and only this state) has a flag to
show when someone has replied to a bug after we've asked a question.
Sorry you feel it to be a "smackdown", however as you can see, the
process worked here - your "rant" got flagged as an answer and here I
am.  :-)  Unfortunately Launchpad doesn't differentiate between answers
from the original reporter vs. any random commenter (I _really_ wish it
did...) but this process works.

Anyway, this is probably all TMI, but one rant deserves another I guess.
;-)  I don't want you thinking we all just sit around on our thumbs all
release and then spam everyone to retest, although I'm sure you must
think that!

** Changed in: nvidia-graphics-drivers-180 (Ubuntu)
       Status: Incomplete => New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/421048

Title:
  Black dots appear on screen