On Fri, 2011-09-02 at 18:33 -0400, Matt McCutchen wrote:
> We clearly
> want to bugs to be CLOSED, not open with a quasi-closed keyword or
> whiteboard field.
I'm not sure who "we" is, but I disagree. The generally accepted
definition of CLOSED is that the resolution is final unless subsequent
events invalidate the original rationale. (C.f. the RHEL policy: "The
bug is considered dead, the resolution is correct.") All it takes for
an expired bug to be reopened is for someone to have enough interest to
retest it in a maintained Fedora version. To claim that this meets the
definition of CLOSED is a big stretch. I believe that "expired" should
properly be its own major state alongside "open" and "closed", but
we
have alternatives that are less radical and still solve the immediate
problem with search.
The reason for the auto-closing is 'problems with search': developers do
not want to have searches for open bugs cluttered up with bugs for
ancient versions. Any change which involves not closing the old bugs
will result in the auto-close procedure not solving this problem any
more, because the bugs will show up in a default search, and - as you
mentioned - developers will have to remember to customize their searches
every time to cover only currently-active versions. If we were to do
that we might as well not do anything to old bugs automatically at all,
because it's about as easy to customize a search to 'fedora 14, fedora
15, fedora 16, rawhide' as it is to customize it to 'no bugs with
keyword EXPIRED'.
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net