[Reportbug-maint] Bug#372720: Mode experts allows to bypass the reportbug criticity limitations

[Ben Finney]

The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
that has been posted to gmane.linux.debian.alioth.reportbug.devel as well.

Simon Waters <simon at technocool.net> writes:

> If Debian procedures ensure Grave bugs are reviewed as promptly as
> Critical bugs

The severity of a bug is, as I understand it, intentionally divorced
from the priority of attending to that bug. There is no necessary
procedural connection between them.

> (but then why have a Critical level in that case?)

The different severity levels are well-defined
<URL:http://www.debian.org/Bugs/Developer#severities>, and more
importantly those definitions are defined only in terms of the *effect*
of the bug. The severity is easily discussed in terms of facts.

This allows the severity to be independently, and hopefully
dispassionately, assessed by anyone without a stake in getting the bug
fixed.

> I appreciate it is difficult, as there are competing interests in
> reducing spurious reporting of critical bugs, and also of ensuring
> genuinely critical issues are dealt with promptly.

Debian bugs are attended to largely by volunteers. To my knowledge,
there is no procedural “priority” for bug reports, beyond the
coarse-grained “if this bug isn't fixed by the time we release, the
package gets removed” threshold.

The priority of addressing the bug is a much more socially-defined and
inherently subjective property. It's good that there is no unnecessary
entangling of the severity with the priority: this allows the
person-to-person negotiation of priority to remain squarely outside the
factual description of the bug's effect.

-- 
 \       “My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves |
  `\              to fact, not to try and make facts harmonise with my |
_o__)                   aspirations.“ —Thomas Henry Huxley, 1860-09-23 |
Ben Finney