On the Democratic Operation of Bugzilla

[Garrett Hylltun]

On Feb 23, 2006, at 11:07 AM, Dan Shafer wrote:

> This provided me with an opportunity to say something I've been
> meaning to say for some time but never had a "trigger" for.

Ditto!

Ok, so I spent all this money for Rev, and I would expect that any  
bug report sent to them would be taken seriously and that it would be  
actively followed up by the company.  I can understand setting  
priorities depending on the severity of the bug, but having the users  
rate and vote?  I thought I was purchasing a product, not getting  
married to a second wife!  Bugzilla seems like it relies far too much  
on the users and not enough on the company.  Users should not have to  
do such things, especially after spending this much money on the  
product.  It's almost absurd, more so if just because a bug is not  
rated hight or voted on by anyone else, then is that to say that it  
may get completely ignored?

So it seems this is the scenario;  Pay hefty price for Rev, pay hefty  
price for updates?!/upgrades, Pay heavy for extras, and make the  
users who paid for the product work for you by making them search out  
all the bugs, post them for you, rate them for you, vote on them for  
you, follow up on them for you.....  To quote "Jubel Early", a not so  
famous bounty hunter from a not so famous TV series that's long since  
been canceled... "Does that seem right to you?"

I can understand the hefty base price of the product, I can't agree  
with having to pay for damned updates! where fixes that they should  
be responsible for should be taken care of by them.  I can understand  
a small fee for upgrades, but not the amount they are asking for.

But what upsets me the most is depending on the paying customers to  
help them track down bugs!  What the hell are they doing with the  
money?  And what the hell are they doing releasing a product that is  
already known to have bugs still in it!   They should be paying  
testers for this and not raping the paying customers for this work.   
With the prices they are charging for everything, we shouldn't even  
be having this conversation at all!  If a user finds a bug, he/she  
should be able to simply report the bug to Rev either via email or a  
bug report form on their site, and they should take care of  
everything from there!  That bug should be gone by the next update of  
the product.

I'm sorry for being a bit over the edge, but I've been in this  
business myself, and this really makes me mad.  You don't release  
products if you know it still contains bugs!  You don't upgrade your  
product unless the upgrade fixes all the prior bugs.  Updates are to  
fix bugs and issues that you didn't catch earlier, that somehow got  
past your beta testing team, and updates are free since you're fixing  
your own mistakes, not mistakes of the customer.  Upgrades are not  
like going from 1.1 to 1.2, but from 1.x to 2.x  Upgrades are when  
the product has had some major changes done to it, improvements and  
new features over the previous version.

I'm really starting to regret my purchasing Rev now.  I'm feeling  
like I've been ripped off.  Rev is a nice product, but if this is how  
the company is going to operate, then I'm not going to be updating/ 
upgrading.  And I doubt that Rev is going to change their business  
practice since it seems so many people tolerate it and  continue to  
give them money for releasing a product that will always have bugs in  
it.

Runtime...  Stop charging for updates!  Fix all the bugs and release  
an update, then work on an upgrade when all the bugs are fixed.  Go  
ahead and charge for upgrades.  Dump the 'zilla stuff and setup your   
own internal bug tracking system so you guys can take care of this  
and leave the customers out of the process.  Beat the crap out of  
your beta testing team for allowing all this stuff to get through to  
the customers.

Sorry to everyone else for my angry post to the mailing list.  If a  
hand slapping is due to me for this, I'll gladly take it as I should.

Best regards,
-Garrett