Hi, David Neary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> The problems as I see them are > > 1) User feedback on the development series is poor > 2) Documentation is poor > 3) Our release cycle is poor > 4) UI is not a priority. I am very surprised about point (4). We have put a lot of effort into improving the user interface. I would even go so far to say that UI has the highest priority. Also I have to disagree with point (1). There is substantial user feedback on the development series. You probably don't read the gimp-user mailing list and don't follow the discussion on various public forums whenever a release is done. Other developers seem to do that and all this feedback is going back into the development. I really don't see your point. > 1) Not enough users use bugzilla to report bugs Bugzilla is the only way to report bugs. Whooever reports bugs uses Bugzilla for it. A few people need to be shown the way to it but in the end everyone uses Bugzilla. > 2) Not enough developers use Bugzilla to find out what bugs need > fixing > 3) Not enough developers hear user complaints I believe that all active developers use Bugzilla. Mitch and me spend a substantial amount of time with Bugzilla and I have the impression that other developers do the same. > - Mail alias - [EMAIL PROTECTED] This one is dead, noone is using it. It's only used for syndicating Bugzilla changes. > My first proposal would be to do a reverse split of the users > and developers mailing lists - get everyone talking to one > another. It will certainly annoy people because of increased > traffic, but I think it'll be worth it. We have to face up to the > fact that after 3 years without a major release, and only 14 > active developers, the GIMP is a small project. Step 1 is to get > people talking to each other. This might be a good idea but I am afraid that it will have a negative effect. I fear that users will stop subscribing to the list because there is too much technological discussion and I fear that developers will be annoyed by too much ever-repeating newbie questions. > Proposal 2 is to either do away with [EMAIL PROTECTED] or de-spam it. We need [EMAIL PROTECTED] Despamming it is of course a good idea and I wonder why Yosh has disabled the spam-filter again. Getting rid of [EMAIL PROTECTED] as a syndication of changes to Bugzilla is definitely a very bad idea. It would cause unseen changes to bugs and new bug-reports being ignored. > I'd actually prefer doing away with it altogether. People > (including myself) use it as a crutch to avoid hunting around in > bugzilla, and it results in us using bugzilla wrong (no-one takes > possesion of gimp bugs, they float around in ownerless land until > they get fixed). I don't know what you are doing with the mail alias but I consider it to be the most important thing in GIMP development these days. Without it Bugzilla would not be half as useful as it is. Have a look at the stats, there are no new bugs floating around. Usually bug-reports get answered in less than 24 hours. We trimmed down the number of open bugs to a half during the last year. If there is some success story in GIMP development, then it's Bugzilla. The main cause for this is the fact that developers get mail from Bugzilla whenever a new bug is reported or a report is changed. > I would prefer to set up a system of module owners, who take > possession of bugs, and send them on to the people best suited to > fixing them. These people wouldn't even need to be technical, they'd > just be required to do a first-level filter (invalid or nogabug or > needinfo bugs) and send the real bugs to the people most likely to > fix them. Of course a good idea in theory but facing the fact that there are only very few active developers, it doesn't seem to be doable. If you can hire a team of 5 QA persons for this job, I'd vote for your proposal. > Proposal 3 is to try to persuade the Win32 guys to come back to > the main gimp mailing list. 1.3 should be buildable out of CVS. This has happened, the win32 development is discontinued and subscribers have been asked to join gimp-developer and/or gtk+-devel instead. > Proposal 6 - allow people to submit bug reports without a > bugzilla account. I would like it if Bugzilla could get their > email address from the first mail they send to the portal, > sign them up and send them a password, but it doesn't. As a > technical problem, is this possible? Or could we have a mail > alias to which mails (which pass a spam filter) get converted > into bugzilla reports, with the e-mail information in the body of > the bug report? This would mean more bug-reports without a working email address of the bug reporter. IMO a very bad idea since experience shows that these bug reports cause a lot of work and often need to be closed as INCOMPLETE or INVALID in the end. > I think this is important to allow people see a more reactive > gimp community. A current typical use-case might be "gimp crashes, > restart gimp", or it might be "gimp crashes, go to gimp web page, > nothing about bugs on the first page, restart gimp", or it might > be "gimp crashes, go to gimp web page, nothing about bugs on > first page, scroll down 4 pages, follow "Submit a bug!" link, > there's a page asking for me to enter my e-mail address, restart > gimp". I don't believe that the typical gimp user gets a bugzilla > account when he runs into a gimp problem. There is info about bugs on the first page of www.gimp.org. I don't know what you are talking about. > OK - so that's it. Food for thought. Basically, since 1.2 the > size of the gimp community has been shrinking. We don't have any > documenters, we don't have many testers, we don't have many bug > fixers, we have very few web developers, we have a couple of > artists, and we have maybe a dozen active developers. Something > needs to be done to change that, or the gimp will never see a > major release with gegl (whatever version number it will have). Your mail really confused me as I don't seem to be able to follow most of the points you brought up. Dave, is that really you who wrote this?? Sven _______________________________________________ Gimp-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gimp-developer
