Re: Emacs project mission (was Re: "If you're still seeing problems, please reopen." [

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 22.11.2019 5:38, Richard Stallman wrote:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>    > The larger audience I meant here are the existing users of Emacs. A lot
>    > of which avoid reporting bugs to Debbugs. And I know that because I
>    > maintain some third-party packages with different issue trackers.
>
> Maybe some of the people who report bugs for other packages might
> avoid reporting bugs for Emacs.  If so, could you ask them why they
> avoid it?

I've been repeating "use M-x report-emacs-bug" in various comments 
everywhere like a mantra, but even out of people who say they will file 
a report, less than half do so (judging by the reports which do appear 
in the tracker. Here's the latest occurrence: 
https://github.com/mooz/js2-mode/issues/539

As for why it happens, the possible reasons have been described multiple 
times:

- The interface is unfamiliar, the user doesn't understand what's going 
to happen,
- Their Emacs is likely not to have SMTP configured, and the necessity 
to copy over the report's contents to their email client is not clear 
for most,
- Even if they do manage the above step, the bug tracker is like a black 
hole: you get a notification that a bug was filed, and that's it. In all 
likelihood nobody is going to respond for the new few days (or months). 
And if they do, it will be an unusual experience for many, having a bug 
discussion over email, with its own etiquette and everything. With no 
understanding who the participating people are.

Whereas in most other projects both the repository and the bug tracker 
the public and visible, and easy to observe that development work is 
going on, recent reports are being handled, meaning they are welcome, 
and whatever grievances the user has have the possibility to be fixed.

> The recommended way to report one does not involve using Debbugs directly.
> It is M-x report-emacs-bug.
>
> Do they not know about report-emacs-bug?

Even those who know, often don't follow this process through to the end. 
I don't have the time to chase everybody with questions. I did that a 
few times (for those non-reporters) and got exactly zero follow-up 
responses.

Also: I think Yamamoto Mitsuharu's Mac Port changes the bug reporting 
address to his own mailbox: 
https://bitbucket.org/mituharu/emacs-mac/src/3bf213d502a8260d29f7f55eb0938fc0a2594ea2/lisp/mail/emacsbug.el#lines-140:142

And I'm not sure if I've ever seen him forward any reports to us. So the 
users of Mac port can't send us bug reports the usual way.