It’s the beginning of October and one year ago I started working fulltime as maemo.org Bugmaster (after I had started together with Karsten in May 2008).
Where are we and what are the plans?
Stats
On 29 Sep 2008 there were 1076 open tickets (including Website). Now there are 658 open tickets (including Websites, excluding Extras). That of course does not mean that difference of 418 tickets has all been FIXED (some reports became WONTFIX or got closed due to lack of response of the reporters when asking for more information), but it shows that there’s activity, feedback and that reporters can expect that somebody cares about their issue.
In the last 12 months 1501 reports have been filed (including 3rd party Extras apps, without it’s only 651). That’s normal average (10/2007–09/2008: 1690; 10/2006–09/2007: 1269). Curious what the number for the next 12 months will be though.
Nokia
What has only improved a bit is getting Nokia developers to work in the community instead of with the community. Big thanks to those trying it already.
It’s the Nokia management that has to allocate developers’ time for this, and it’s the community that has to convince with arguments why it’s better for everybody (simply imagine managers and developers used to commercial closed source development, e.g. the S60 series). I won’t elaborate in this paragraph; in short: I do hope to see improvement here after Fremantle (Maemo5) launch and by having some discussions at the upcoming Maemo Summit.
Misc
- We’ve opened Bugzilla to also provide bugtracking for some 3rd party applications hosted in the maemo.org Extras repository.
- At the end of last year the structure of the products and components was reorganized to better match user expectations (“Hmm, where should I file my issue?”) plus also the organization of internal Nokia developer teams. That was a bit like trying to square the circle but I think that the compromise is pretty good.
- Additional to Stephen’s awesome weekly Maemo Bug Jars I started providing a monthly Feature Jar that only covers the enhancement requests in Bugzilla, published on the maemo.org mailing lists and in talk.maemo.org. It’s based on the votes for each request, so if you have a application-specific wishlist item that is an affair of the heart to you go vote for it in Bugzilla (if it’s platform-wide it’s better suited to file it in the maemo.org Brainstorm).
Future
- Planning the changes required for Fremantle (adding new products, changing some descriptions etc) is basically finished. Next is to add all this and set it up once the final Fremantle version is available.
- Porting the Bugzilla codebase to upstream 3.4 version – ongoing (currently working on CSS). Ferenc has been a huge help codewise so far. I owe him quite some beers.
- Regular bugdays. See next paragraph.
Bugsquad
I’ve already blogged about changes and expectations related to the N900 launch. One more thing that I’d like to add: After the N900 launch I want to start having monthly bugdays – the maemo.org Bugsquad is a great way for people that want to get involved but don’t necessarily want or know how to code. Bugsquads constantly need fresh blood as they always tend to “lose” members to the evil, evil codewriters fraction. ;-)
You
So what are your impressions and expectations with regard to maemo.org Bugzilla?
(Picture by Dženan Šehić, CC licensed)
