[maemo-developers] On the problem of Nokia bugs substituting changelogs

[From: Ryan Abel]

itT user free was kind enough to compile what basically amounts to a
changelog for 4.2008.30-2[1] (something Nokia has been promising to do
for 2 years now with zero results). What I've noticed about these
changelogs is that many of them mention Nokia bug numbers in lieu of
actually providing real information on changes. Though typical of
Nokia, this is _NOT_ acceptable. This practice limits deciphering of
these changelogs to people who have access to Nokia's internal
tracker. While this is great for Nokia employees and contractors, this
is not an OK thing to hoist upon the community.

Now, there are a few projects that aren't so bad (rtcomm, in
particular, seems consistent about using the Nokia bug #'s more as
backgrounds references rather than substitutions for real changelogs),
but there are others that are about as bad as they could get. Modest,
in fact, seems to ENTIRELY substitute NB#'s for real changelogs[2].
Quoting a recent Modest changelog:

> modest (1.0-2008.26-1) hardy; urgency=low
>
>   * Fixes: NB#83920, NB#86372, NB#86116, NB#84538, NB#84757, NB#85343
>   * Fixes: NB#85344, NB#85034, NB#83892, NB#84808, NB#84791, NB#82137
>   * Fixes: NB#83135, NB#85622, NB#86097, NB#86176, NB#85201, NB#84348
>   * Fixes: NB#81798, NB#85873, NB#85743, NB#84605, NB#81429
>
>  -- Dirk-Jan C. Binnema <dirk-jan.binnema at nokia.com>  Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:01:57 +0300

I was considering how I might go about filing a bug in Bugzilla about
this, but the problem is too widespread and I don't feel like filling
a bug for each individual project that allows this practice (they'll
just be ignored anyway https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3442
:\), and a wiki page about it wont accomplish anything. So I'm
appealing to this list and any Nokia developers on it responsible for
creating changelogs, or who have any influence over their creation.
Please, try not to exclude the community even more from Nokia's
development process, and please stop degrading Nokia's image in the
community. It's bad enough as-is.

Now, I realize some things are confidential, and can't be mentioned in
public changelogs, but this exception doesn't apply to open source
packages. At the very least, you could at least provide a bug summary
to go with the bug number (this can be scripted, so "too much work"
isn't a valid excuse), or go the extra mile and provide real
changelogs (perhaps with maemo.org bugzilla bug numbers when
relevant?).

I thank you for your time and consideration. Remember: the community
wants to help, and excluding it is bad for you and bad for Nokia. :)

[1]http://p.quinput.eu/debfarm/changelog.html
[2]Actually, let me take this opportunity to CALL OUT the Modest
developers for very poor communication with the community for a
supposedly "open source" project. Their component on Bugzilla seems to
be virtually barren of real Modest-developer participation, and one
only seems to be able to elicit a response from any of them when
they're practically cornered on significant bugs. This is very
unfortunate for what I hope will become a very cool, lightweight, and
open source email client. . . . :(