Apparently my last blog post got picked up by both Conceivably Tech and Slashdot, somewhat to my surprise. It also came to my attention that I was a bit too ambiguous in how I worded things, so I wanted to make a few clarifications.
Firefox did not ship with 6,000 bugs. Rather, there are 6,000 UNCO bugs in the Firefox Product on BMO. Not 6,000 real bugs, but rather 6,000 bugs that haven’t been marked as NEW. Out of those 6,000 bugs, there are duplicates, bugs that have already been fixed, bugs that are user error, bugs that are caused by third-party software, and so on. I simply wanted to suggest that we need to do a better job of going through the bugs that are submitted. Without going through the list, it is difficult to determine which bugs are real, and which are invalid.
What is more important to me than the number of bugs in Bugzilla is how fast we respond to the bugs that are submitted as UNCONFIRMED. If we don’t respond to bugs submitted to BMO within a reasonable time frame, the chance of missing a major regression or of something else slipping by is much greater. With the new Rapid Release, it makes it even more important that we strive as hard as we can to get a quick response to end-user bug submissions.
The situation with Triage is not hopeless. I have been in talks over the past few days, and I see a good possibility that Mozilla means business in improving triage. My blog post was a summary of the state of triage today. There is a new “Tell Us More” input tool in the works, which will implement some of my desired changes (such as a separate product for UNCONFIRMED bugs). Several other ideas are being bounced around, so hopefully progress will be made soon.
To those that have given me the title “Community Lead”, I am not a Mozilla Employee, nor did I ever have a “Title”. I am a volunteer and have never been paid or been “appointed” by Mozilla as a “Community Lead”. My opinions are mine only, and are not an official statement from Mozilla or any Mozilla employee.
I’m going to write another blog post in a day or two concerning some more details and clear up the confusion that was apparently in my last blog post.
