Kind of inflammatory post that boils down to one reason--there's no point in having a bug tracking system if you're not going to address the bugs.
I disagree with this article. Especially if you're open source, you gain a lot by having a bug tracking system:
1. It's another way to get user feedback. Are people excitedly opening lots of new enhancements, or frustratedly reporting lots of crashes? Building community is extremely important.
2. It's a way to MEASURE the priority of bugs. Are 30% of your users running into this bug and piling on with "me too" comments? Then you'd better fix it. If you keep closing bugs because you dont want to fix them, you wont see that feedback.
3. It's a way to organize your own thoughts and priorities. Is the new feature X that you want REALLY more important than fixing the existing functionality? How broken are things currently?
There's nothing wrong with leaving a bug open and making the comment that "it will be a while before we fix this" I'm more likely to submit a patch in that case, as a user.
Basically, this article is about optimizing the developer experience rather than the user experience. This seems to be a problem endemic in open source software anyway, which is why so few people use it.
"Basically, this article is about optimizing the developer experience rather than the user experience."
Did you ever use Bugzilla? Nothing is more detrimental to the user experience...
Users would rather send support e-mails or use phone support. For the lack of that in open source project, keep bug trackers simple. E.g. Github's bugtracker is quite ok, it is fine for writing a bugreport and reacting to it. But doesn't have all the bells and whistles that makes it complicated for users.
Compared to closed source? As a function of time spent interacting? Yes.
> Closed source is better at optimizing for user experience?
Manifestly. Firefox is the only real counterexample I can think of (where development is conducted in the open, not where source code dumps are made available).
I disagree with this article. Especially if you're open source, you gain a lot by having a bug tracking system:
1. It's another way to get user feedback. Are people excitedly opening lots of new enhancements, or frustratedly reporting lots of crashes? Building community is extremely important.
2. It's a way to MEASURE the priority of bugs. Are 30% of your users running into this bug and piling on with "me too" comments? Then you'd better fix it. If you keep closing bugs because you dont want to fix them, you wont see that feedback.
3. It's a way to organize your own thoughts and priorities. Is the new feature X that you want REALLY more important than fixing the existing functionality? How broken are things currently?
There's nothing wrong with leaving a bug open and making the comment that "it will be a while before we fix this" I'm more likely to submit a patch in that case, as a user.