Bugzilla
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Bugzilla is a bug tracking system backed by SQL database. Many open source projects use Bugzilla. NetBeans uses it too.
Throw Away Your Bugtracking System
I've noticed very nice and inspiring article few months ago. It somehow captures something I always had somewhere deep inside me: Leaving tons of bugs open is useless.
In March 2010 I started to practise it by announcing that I will close every issue I find that does not match the project owner expectations. I started with 300 bugs in modules of my reponsibility back then. Now, half a year ago I have 15 open issues. I think the article was right. It does not make any sense to keep issues open.
Either fix them, if they are producible. Or enhance logging and close as worksforme and wait. Or give up and honestly say that you don't care (e.g. close as won'tfix).
The question however is who's the project owner on an open source project like NetBeans?
Open Source Project Owners
The NetBeans bugzilla is full of issues that nobody addresses. The team is always unsure what to do with them. On one side, there is a desire is to resolve them - our release dashboard looks bad with few thousands of P3 or P4 bugs (which are usually enhancements anyway). On the other side, we are tempted to believe that one day someone will take over the bug and thus we shall leave it open.
As far as my experience says, nobody ever took a bug just because it was open. Those issues just annoy all of us for ages. From time to time, there is a business need (e.g. someone is willing to pay) to solve some of them, but that happens with issues resolved as won'tfix as well. It is easy to reopen them in such situation. There does not seem to be a value in keeping issues nobody plans to work on open.
The throw away your bug tracking system article is really inspiring. I understand NetBeans is not real agile project, but never the less, we apply some agile principles. Does an enhancement violate expectations of product owner? Who can decide that?
First of all, we need to seek product owner. Product owner is the one who can make decisions about the product. Certainly my employer can tell me what to do. If my company thought some behaviour violates expectations, I'd had to fix it. This is clear. But who can be a product owner in a open source project like NetBeans?
In a open community, probably everyone can ask to be seen as a product owner. However, as product owner has to be able to make decisions, it is proper to ask what kind of decisions a community member can make? Well, a community member can decide and choose level of its own participation in the project. In particular, every open source contributor can decided how much help one can donate to eliminate the violation that one perceives.
In order to keep open source open, it is important to respect everyone's right to eliminate such violations. However one has to act, not just talk. In open source, it is the code that counts. If one is not able to contribute that, then we need to question whether such person can play role of "product owner".
I am responsible for the module in question (e.g. issues in that module are assigned to me and I have to deal with them, otherwise there will be no next NetBeans release). That is why I feel like a default "product owner". I believe I have the right to act according to the "throw away your bugzilla" article: e.g. unless there is a real contribution from the community, I am going to decide whether something violates behavior in the "Done" story.
In case of #175616, I am strongly convinced that everything behaves as was specified. As a result I am plan to close the issue and let it in such state, until there is someone who donates the work and thus qualifies for a "product owner" status with respect to #175616.
In case you disagree with my evaluation, we can bring the issue to NetBeans Board, which is 2/3 independent on Oracle. I'd be curious to find out whether they would agree with my "product owner is the one who is willing to donate the work" philosophy.
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