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From:   Jani Nikula <jani.nikula@intel.com>
To:     Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>,
        "Artem S. Tashkinov" <aros@gmx.com>
Cc:     Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info>,
        Konstantin Ryabitsev <konstantin@linuxfoundation.org>,
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        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
        "regressions@lists.linux.dev" <regressions@lists.linux.dev>,
        ksummit@lists.linux.dev
Subject: Re: Planned changes for bugzilla.kernel.org to reduce the "Bugzilla
 blues"
In-Reply-To: <YzcL8VLpk00hC1so@pendragon.ideasonboard.com>
Organization: Intel Finland Oy - BIC 0357606-4 - Westendinkatu 7, 02160 Espoo
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Date:   Mon, 03 Oct 2022 14:44:55 +0300
Message-ID: <87y1txuo5k.fsf@intel.com>
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On Fri, 30 Sep 2022, Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com> wrote:
> E-mail *clients* are horrible to keep track of state. E-mail itself,
> as in RFC822 (and newer), SMTP and other protocols, only handle
> transport of data. As the data within the e-mail body is free-formed,
> and wasn't meant to track items and their state, clients never evolved
> in that direction.

Email is a massively distributed software fuzzing project that lets you
transmit messages in the sideband. :p

> Bugzilla won't solve this. The huge elephant in the room is that most
> maintainers are overworked. Whether a bug report arrives in my mailbox
> as an e-mail straight from the reporter or from a bug tracker will
> make very little difference if I don't have time to look into it (I
> would even argue that bug trackers are even worse there: if I'm really
> short of time, I'm more likely to prioritize replying to e-mails
> instead of having to open a link in a web browser).

I think a bug tracker helps in quantifying the problems you have,
though, including the maintainer bandwidth. Email doesn't easily lend
itself to that kind of analysis. I can't point managers at list emails
and ask for help. And if you do get people to help, having a centralized
place for the bug data helps them.

The flip side is that it's easier for me to ignore notification mails
from a bug tracker because I know the info isn't lost in a sea of other
mails.


BR,
Jani.


-- 
Jani Nikula, Intel Open Source Graphics Center