On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 20:38:12 +0200, David Neary wrote:

What is the target audience? Who should be interested?

That depends on what the goal of the bug week is. See below for some comments. IMHO, the target audience is made of two groups: - The developers: anybody who has a minimum amount of experience with the GIMP code and could submit a patch for any bug that has or will be marked as "esay-fix".
- Some GIMP users who could volunteer for bug triaging.

What's special about a bug week?
What is the goal of the bug week?

The GNOME Bugsquad has Bug Days. They are used for bug triage, not necessarily fixing. So they are mostly concerned about keeping Bugzilla up-to-date, verifying the bug reports, etc. See their FAQ: http://developer.gnome.org/projects/bugsquad/triage/faq.html#II

I think that we would like to do a bit more than bug triage and try to fix some bugs. So that would be more like a "bug fixing week". Of course, the "fixing" part would only apply to those who have some coding skills.

As some of you already know, next week is the pre-2.0 GIMP Bug Week. The first pre-releases of 2.0 will start coming out the dorr around the end of next month, and we need to get some

^^^^ door

conceentrated testing done before then, as well as classifying

^^^^^^^^^^^^^ concentrated

known bugs into those which will be fixed before 2.0 and those which will be fixedd after.

^^^^^^ fixed

I would be a bit more careful about the last part of that sentence. If your announcement is posted to the gimp-users list or to the newsgroup, some users may think that they (alone) get to decide on which bugs should be prioritized. Although the users (in general) should certainly give some feedback about that, it should be clear that not all bugs will be fixed before 2.0 and what gets fixed depends also on having some developer(s) who is(are) interested in fixing the bug (except if this is a critical bug that must be fixed, but in this case the decision is easy anyway).

For those of you who aren't familiar with the idea, a bug week is a week when we make an extra effort to find bugs (and fix them) with the assistance of the general public. We invite people to join up on IRC (irc://irc.gnome.org/#gimp) to give us feedback, to prioritise bugs to be fixed in the next release, and to report bugs (if you're intimidated by Bugzilla).

Shouldn't we encourage feedback on the gimp-user and gimp-developer lists as well? IRC is nice (for those who can use it :) ) but some discussions about prioritizing may take more than the few minutes of a typical IRC chat. So the mailing lists or the newsgroup (why not?) could also be suggested. We should avoid cross-posting, though.

-Raphaël

On 28 Aug 2003, at 20:38, David Neary wrote:

I started writing an announcement for the bug week which is supposed to happen next week (it could happen the week after, though). Basically, I realised that I don't know what a bug week is supposed to be.

So there are some questions...

What is the target audience? Who should be interested? What's special about a bug week?
What is the goal of the bug week?

Well, in the end bug week means what you want it to mean. What are _your_ expectations?

When Mozilla held its bug week in 2001, it was facing a public relations disaster. From the much praised commercial open-source project that could, over three years of producing nothing* had made it almost the opposite: a warning for commercial entities to stay away from FOSS.

So Mozilla needed to re-befriend a lot of people in order to get some support after its 1.0 release. It seems to me that their Bug Week was part of that strategy: re-acquaint developers with the code. Bug- fixing was just the vehicle.

The question for us, then, should be: why are we holding a bug week?

You should ask Mozilla.org for their expectations and their experiences with bug week.

*) When I say 'nothing', I mean no deliverable core product, i.e. web browser. No-one can deny that interesting software has come from the Mozilla project.

BTW, in a previous discussion on this list called 'bug week', a lot of suggestions were done as to how to draw people to the GIMP.

Guillermo Romero suggested interactive tutorials via IRC. Bex and Carol were discussing a way of acquainting new artists with the GIMP by having them make a tarot set. Perhaps events like these could be incorporated to involve as much of the community as possible.

On 28 Aug 2003 at 20:38, David Neary wrote:

Hi all,

I started writing an announcement for the bug week which is supposed to happen next week (it could happen the week after, though). Basically, I realised that I don't know what a bug week is supposed to be.

So there are some questions...

What is the target audience?

The target audience is everyone who can test a recent build of The GIMP. Preferably, he or she is also able to build it and apply patches, so that a proposed fix can be tested right away.

As most of the main developers seem to use some kind of Linux or Unix as their development platform, it would be good to invite the users and developers of other platforms - so that bugs as simple as text/binary confusions in CVS can be found ;)

I don't know if localization bugs are supposed to be covered by this bug week - but if they are, native speakers of languages other than english should be invited, too.

Who should be interested?

Everyone who wants to see a bug free GIMP 2.0. In order to reach them, every communication channel should be used for the best possible - not everyone can or wants to use IRC. Be sure to spread the news to the mailing lists, news group and the various gimp portal site everywhere around the globe (I hope that gimp.de will be up again shortly).

What's special about a bug week?

Theres someone who listens and reponds to everything that is reported ;) As the bug reports pour in on all available channels, the job of this poor person is to filter out duplicates, redirect reporters of new aspects to existing dicussions, refine bug reports and poke the developers.

After the bug week, he will have developed a severe carpal tunnel syndrome and be the personal enemy of every GIMP developer.

What is the goal of the bug week?

Getting a much new bugs as possbile reported, confirmed ... and resolved, of course.

HTH,
Michael

On 28 Aug 2003 at 20:38, David Neary wrote:

Hi all,

I started writing an announcement for the bug week which is supposed to happen next week (it could happen the week after, though). Basically, I realised that I don't know what a bug week is supposed to be.

BTW, is bug week supposed to cover other aspects of the project (website, newsgroup, irc, mailing lists, ...), too?

Michael

On Tue, 2 Sep 2003 14:26:33 +0200, David Neary wrote:

Raphaël Quinet wrote:

I think that we would like to do a bit more than bug triage and try to fix some bugs. So that would be more like a "bug fixing week". Of course, the "fixing" part would only apply to those who have some coding skills.

I think you have the clearest idea of what is involved in this, and you seem to have a good handle on the who, how and when... would you mind doing an announcement mail, and pointing to some of the relevant GNOME bug triage and "getting involved" docs (until, of course, we have our own)? We could try and do this next week, perhaps?

Well, yes but I don't think that I will be able to do much before Friday, because I am currently on a business trip and it is not easy for me to read and write e-mail.

[... about using the mailing lists besides IRC]

I guess... too many avenues and any effect will be diluted. Following the GNOME model, the idea is to make a conscious effort to have people on IRC for real-time feedback on triaging, as far as I can tell. If that's the model we want to follow, then the mailing lists don't really offer that kind of communication model.

Yes, that makes sense.

Just get yourself an IRC client, Raphael :)

I have many IRC clients! The problem is that I cannot use them: I have a slow and expensive dial-up connection at home and a much faster connection at work but that one has a firewall that blocks IRC (the firewall allows only HTTP, SMTP and SSH). So I don't think that I will be able to use any IRC client until I get a cable modem or xDSL line at home.

But seriously, would you mind drafting an announcement for this, if you have the time? It would be nice to get this done soon, and I really don't have a clear idea of what we expect from the week, whereas you seem to have some good ideas.

Your announcement didn't look too bad. As I wrote above, I don't think that I will be able to do much before Friday. So if someone else wants to pick up the job in the meantime, I would not complain. But then again, the mailing lists are so slow for the moment that this message will probably not be delivered until Friday anyway. Fortunately, you have IRC to discuss that with the other #gimp'ers. ;-) If you don't get any better proposals before the end of this week, then I will try to improve it and send you a draft of a revised announcement.

-Raphaël