Public Bugzilla replaced with Private Jira, first move to closed source ?

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ajcody
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Re: Public Bugzilla replaced with Private Jira, first move to closed source ?

Post by ajcody »

Thanks for the updates Jorge and Erynn!

The Zeta Alliance is also trying to working on it's own road map of sorts - an issue list. Synacor employee's are welcome to actively engage in this edit by the way.

'Problem-Recommendation-Benefit"
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oKt ... sp=sharing
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Re: Public Bugzilla replaced with Private Jira, first move to closed source ?

Post by jorgedlcruz »

Hi Adam,
Thank you to put all together, and it's good to see even Partners contributing the edit of the document, I think some of the topics on the document will be addressed and fixed/answered during our COMMIT event in NYC in one month: I strongly suggest you to attend, I'm sure after the event a lot of this points will be clarified and solved, don't miss that event, the invitation is for everyone reading this topic as well. If are a Developer, Zimbra Technical Partner, or Technical Customer, or a Zimbra Open Source advocate, COMMIT is your event.

Best regards
Jorge de la Cruz https://jorgedelacruz.es
Systems Engineer at Veeam Software https://www.veeam.com/
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Re: Public Bugzilla replaced with Private Jira, first move to closed source ?

Post by manens »

Hi all just to let you know, during Zimbra Forum France yesturday Synacor annonced that they are closing the bugzlla.

Sorry to disclose that but this was in my mind all the night and my sleep was not as good as I expected it.

The reason is that the is "5 millions open entry" and that it is not "humanly manageable".
( To let you know, the last entry is 108899, so we are far from the million. And there is exactly 17226 Open entry in bugzilla right now)

The new proposed process for bugs and RFE will be a closed process, handeled internally by Zimbra support and engenering, partners and customers should sent RFE and bug to support and support would be in charge of guessing whitch feature or bugfix have a high priority.

In the meeting, I raised part of the argument I already posted here last year but the available time was short and there were many subject to discuss so I think we can discuss more here. (we also speaked of the old loved pm.zimbra.com)

As the bugzilla is not closed yet, I think we should try to argue to Synacor as I think this may lead to a worst situation.

Let me know what you think.

(One of) your zimbra partner, BeeZim
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Re: Public Bugzilla replaced with Private Jira, first move to closed source ?

Post by msquadrat »

Unfortunately I had to catch the plane yesterday and couldn't attend the partner meeting after the official part. From the talks and my chats with the people from Synacor my understanding of the plan is as follows:
  • The current Bugzilla will be disabled but stay around as an archive.
  • All new reports will be handled by some not yet specified process involving their internal Jira instance.
  • They commit to answering each bug/RFE within two months with a definite timeframe when it will be fixed or a "sorry, we can't fix that one" -- either due to resource constraints or because it doesn't fit into the plans for Zimbra (personal side note: fair enough, there are already too many half-finished odd features in Zimbra and I'm all for dropping some of these)
  • The ones which can't be fixed due to resource constraints will be punted to the Open Source Community who can pick these up.
  • There will be a process involving a public Jira instance to handle this.
  • There will be a dedicated technical community manager who was hired already.
  • There will be a foundation which will take care of the Zimbra open source code base.
I don't think this plan is optimal, especially the closed bug report process, but agree that there has to be some way to handle the current Bugzilla situation. Most of the reports on there (as on most Open Source bug trackers) are really useless since they are not reproducible or ask for some fringe features and we have to face the fact that each and every software project is running on limited resources. OTOH is some technical discussion forum required (and this phpBB instance is crap as well). Often I am only able to dig down to the actual root cause of something I am seeing by cross-correlating different reports on Bugzilla and the forums. I'm not sure yet how a perfect (or even better) solution might look like.
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Re: Public Bugzilla replaced with Private Jira, first move to closed source ?

Post by manens »

Hi msquadrat,

we talked about this process of course and your description add elements that were discusses yesturday (community manager, foundatin, public Jira instance or new bugzilla...).

I didn't speak of all the process they proposed because I think that everything will fail if we start with a closed bug report and RFE platform.

I think that saying that most of the report are useless because they are irrevelant is wrong. As you said, we can still have information in those entry even if they are duplicated and with partial description.

The work required to hande all 17k issues is possible by humains, maybe we have to prioritize whan can be handled first based on modification date or other revelent informaiton. This can be the community manager work to drive peolple on this.

But the is no point in having a community manager if there is no community. In all OSS I work with, no one have a closed RFE/bug system. This is the basic tool to create content/community on.
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Re: Public Bugzilla replaced with Private Jira, first move to closed source ?

Post by JDunphy »

Without the ability to look at reported bugs for potential clues and hints, I have to agree that it will become more hit or miss in getting answers to the difficult problems. I believe every ticket I have opened has not been solved by Zimbra support going back to 2006. It often requires the community and/or my own effort to track root cause. I have a ticket open from June 2017 so it looks like my ability to find work arounds or clues that are often in some form in Bugzilla and could not be solved by support is going away. There is a lot of great stuff in those bug reports including code fragments by the community so it's disappointing to learn that tool will not be available.

If it is the paying customer who can only report problems, that most certainly will make this software more fragile going forward. I understand the problem they are facing but this doesn't address the root cause IMO.

I hope they could find away to keep this open myself and find ways to filter the results in more efficient ways. Failing that, I hope they find some mechanism to allow developers a view to prevent hours of frustration from API's or documentation that is incomplete or just wrong.

I am still processing what all this means.

Jim
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Re: Public Bugzilla replaced with Private Jira, first move to closed source ?

Post by Klug »

msquadrat wrote:partner meeting after the official part.
There was a partner meeting?
manens wrote:I think that everything will fail if we start with a closed bug report and RFE platform.
Totally 200% agreed.
Plus, as you said, OSS and "closed bug platform" don't go together at all.

As JDunphy said, considering the support (lack of) performance these last months, if there was not the open bugzilla system (with its comments and code snippets and work-arounds from other users/customers), we would have been in big trouble.
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Re: Public Bugzilla replaced with Private Jira, first move to closed source ?

Post by Blueberry »

As a NE customer, based on our experience from Zimbra's support, I also agree that the bug tracking system should stay public.

Too many times have we had Zimbra's support employee immediatly closing support cases based on the fact that the bug report already existed suggesting that we should vote for the bug report to - eventually - have it fixed.
What kind of enterprise support is/was that ?

If Zimbra's idea is to replace the current bugzilla with a new bug tracking system for better visibility and efficiency in bug fixing, this sounds reasonable to me. But if the community loses all visibility on bugs and can't report new bugs, we will all lose the ability to measure how a ZCS version is ready for production. Sorry having to say that but past experiences showed that we couldn't rely on Zimbra's QA testing for that anymore.
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Re: Public Bugzilla replaced with Private Jira, first move to closed source ?

Post by Klug »

Official announcement: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=63913
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Re: Public Bugzilla replaced with Private Jira, first move to closed source ?

Post by yllyxzmz »

Thread title is awfully prescient in hindsight, and it only took *checks watch* just over 3 years to finish the job.
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