Opera Bug Reporting Portal - Operazilla?

Opera Bug Reporting Portal - Operazilla?

I am having a hard time finding a full scale Opera Bug Reporting Portal - does it exist?
Do Opera Community and developers need such Portal? Please write in this thread, what do YOU think...

Current Bug Reporting Page contains neither Bug Search feature, no Reported Bug List. It has neither Opera developer & user bug comments feature under each Bug Number, no chance for multiple user voting in such Bug (or Feature request) Reports, as it's done in many other places - like Mozilla's Bugzilla site. Am I wrong?

Instead, the Bug page says - repeatedly reported bugs will be ignored. But how a concerned user would know that the bug was already reported? The excuse is there - if it was discussed in the Forums then it has most likely been reported...Some people even feel sorry for them: "Opera team just wants to hide security vulnerabilities from hackers". Are they? Security related bugs can be separated from other categories & made inaccessible.

Does Opera leadership desperately want to hide the Browser Bug Fix Progress, Quantity and even Existence so deep in that primitive manner - just remove access to reported Bugs altogether from concerned Community eyes?

I'm afraid there is no public access to the Bug Tracking System (BTS).

While I personally wouldn't mind giving people access to at least certain bug reports, there are many reasons why it's rather complicated, such as the danger of leaking highly sensitive information about a customer's (like a mobile vendor, for example) future product, leading to lawsuits against Opera for not protecting customer data. That could quickly make Opera Software go bankrupt since we are still a relatively small company with limited funds compared to the size of our customers. Protecting against such mistakes would be a long and resource-intensive process which could end up costing a lot of money. There are all sorts of details that need to be considered, so it is not just a matter of giving people access to the BTS and let them roam freely around. Even limiting the information to one's own reported bugs would often be less than ideal since the status of a bug report does not necessarily reflect the status of the actual bug (if it is a duplicate of a different bug report, for example).

Developers and elektrans (alpha testers) do have access to the bug tracker, the rest of us don't.

Voting for feature requests, such as it is, is done in the Wishlist forum. But since Opera is not a community project, the developers have final say on just what is feasible.

I mean, have you ever spoken with an IE developer? We do see Opera developers all the time here. What is IE's bug tracker like?

But of course you're not going to get very far by constantly repeating yourself, you do know that. People will decide you're nothing but a troll, and besides that multi-posting isn't allowed here.

haavard,

Thanks for your explanation. Still, a developer or Opera client when placing his Bug Report can elect to hide it from others - no lawsuits will follow. As to Bug Duplicates, I assume your team looks at these and classify them as duplicates anyway - why don't update the sourcing Bug Report with "Duplicate" stamp (automatically)?

And what about Mozilla Team - don't they face the same issues for years? Keep in mind, Opera is well regarded for its position to maintain the doors open to the public - and not only for suggestions, but, presumably, for criticism, feature feedback and bug fixing progress control. Would you agree - Opera team and your browser benefit a lot from maintaining this Community Forum? Why don't have a second look at some old policies to make room for fresh air - and some accountability to your followers (I know its always unpleasant...)?

sgunhouse,

An attempt to shut up anyone is never appreciated. Look at your own comments in various threads on the same topic. Plus, I followed your "off topic" note in another thread anyway and removed relevant comment, as it was indeed "off-topic" there, but not here! How about some openness and democracy - or you'd like only niceties to be said regardless of the reality? It never seems to work well...

Originally posted by haavard:

While I personally wouldn't mind giving people access to at least certain bug reports, there are many reasons why it's rather complicated, such as the danger of leaking highly sensitive information about a customer's (like a mobile vendor, for example) future product

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding this, but would it solve the issue to set up a BTS where users have only visibility of their own bugs? That way, your clients can pour out technical specs to their hearts content without the risk of leaking information. That system was in place in the old Premium Support.

Such a set-up would have only limited uses for end users. They wouldn't be able to search for existing bugs, but they would have an overview of the bugs they'd filed and see which had been squashed so far. It's, I guess, debatable whether seeing the successfully solved issues would make users happier than the lingering ones would annoy them, but there is the benefit of allowing users to continue giving feedback on issues that might add more informaiton.

A couple of times, I've noticed changes in bug behaviour across version. Once I noticed a bug had been solved. Should I repost the bug? Should I save every bug-email and email a follow-up? A private bug tracker (e.g. added to my.opera.com) would make offering feedback and monitoring status rather simple.

Once there, it shouldn't be so hard to implement a privacy setting that allows users to make the bug reports public. Alternatively, reports could have both public and private versions. That way a public report could have information added to it that could be made private to some (developers, developers+reporter, etc.).

Increased nuances will make the system more fragile, but I believe even some simple functionality would be useful to users.

To quote myself:

"Protecting against such mistakes would be a long and resource-intensive process which could end up costing a lot of money."

"Even limiting the information to one's own reported bugs would often be less than ideal since the status of a bug report does not necessarily reflect the status of the actual bug (if it is a duplicate of a different bug report, for example)."

Haavard,

In Mozilla'a Bugzilla all Bug Duplicates, once reviewed and identified, are marked and linked to the original Bug Report. You can see, what developer is assigned to fix the bug. Lead Developers' Notes are frequent in the Reports. Any fixing progress is easily noted. Having Opera Portal, it wouldn't take tremendous undertaking to implement here suggested changes.

The point is that Opera fans need to see that their time and effort investment in making your browser better is recognized by Opera staff and turned into something useful. As an example, have you ever open Opera Panel - Bookmarks and wanted to search & see full Bookmark Titles in popping up Tooltips? Were you able to? How it affected your ability to browse the web fast? This is a major productivity bug, inconsistent with Opera image and affecting everyone! But - it hasn't been fixed for years. Would it require the browser overhaul? Hardly... Luck of progress is mainly due to luck of accountability to the Community. Would opening access to Bug Reports help in such cases? It definitely would, and first of all help your company - Opera. Some minor bug fixes can make first time user experience go through the roof - that's were Opera grows potential is! Handhelds included...

Originally posted by haavard:

To quote myself:

Thanks for taking the time.

Originally posted by haavard:

"Protecting against such mistakes would be a long and resource-intensive process which could end up costing a lot of money."

This was not really necessary. I'd already read your post. It was in fact your post that I was replying to. I asked whether providing a BTS where information was secret by default would solve this issue.

Originally posted by haavard:

"Even limiting the information to one's own reported bugs would often be less than ideal since the status of a bug report does not necessarily reflect the status of the actual bug (if it is a duplicate of a different bug report, for example)."

A link to where this latter quote comes from would be useful so that we could see the original context. I'm not quite sure what this has to do with making mistakes in protecting client data. It only points out that limited information would be less than ideal. Which you can see that I reckognise in my post (I'll let readers scroll up to see it in its full glory -- and context -- in my previous post).

I furthermore reckognise that my idea is based in ignorance on the finer details of the bug-swatting process; which is why I asked you the question. What I do know is that developers do already interact with bug-reporters. I've received emails from developers in reply to bug-reports that I've filed. There they are understandably not willing to explain the details of the situation, but they were very sympathetic and helpful (in case it earns them a little extra pat on the back for good PR next meeting; these were Linux devs). The information I did receive was non-critical and could have been published without risk to Opera or myself. Had I been given the option, I would have gladly agreed to publish my correspondence for the benefit of others.

The point I'm making is that from my experience developers are already aware of that they are handling sensitive information and err on the side of caution. Furthermore, if users had control over the information they published and received, they would be responsible themselves for having released that information.

EDIT: PS. Just a quick thought, would Opera have some particular objection if users went and created a front-end to the Opera Bug Wizard that would copy the information sent to Opera in a publicly searchable database?

Originally posted by ZmjbS:

PS. Just a quick thought, would Opera have some particular objection if users went and created a front-end to the Opera Bug Wizard that would copy the information sent to Opera in a publicly searchable database?

There already are such public lists created by users like http://opera.remcol.ath.cx/bugs/ Problem is, how would you make every volunteer use your frontend for submitting bugs? And of course it'd only list user-submitted bugs, not those submitted by Opera people and elektrans

Originally posted by ZmjbS:

The point I'm making is that from my experience developers are already aware of that they are handling sensitive information and err on the side of caution.

Yes, and that's the point. Keeping things safe is a major obstacle. There are all sorts of little details to keep in mind. All potential "holes" must be plugged.

Originally posted by larskl:

There already are such public lists created by users like http://opera.remcol.ath.cx/bugs/

Oh, thanks a lot. I'm going to check that out. It doesn't seem to be a very public thing. I'm going to check this out a bit better.

Originally posted by larskl:

Problem is, how would you make every volunteer use your frontend for submitting bugs?

I wouldn't. That would be their choice.

I'm not sure how well you know the open source movement, but in it contributions to the community are voluntary just as the use thereof. It's not about world domination.

Originally posted by larskl:

And of course it'd only list user-submitted bugs, not those submitted by Opera people and elektrans

True, but as Haavard already said, they aren't willing to release that data anyway.

Originally posted by haavard:

Originally posted by ZmjbS:

The point I'm making is that from my experience developers are already aware of that they are handling sensitive information and err on the side of caution.

Yes, and that's the point. Keeping things safe is a major obstacle. There are all sorts of little details to keep in mind. All potential "holes" must be plugged.

Actually, you misunderstood my point. My point was that the human factor is the weak link. I fail to see your argument for why changing how developers transmit their knowledge to the community (whether by email, a BTS or carrier pidgins) increases the risk of them saying something they shouldn't.

Granted, one could argue that such a slip-up would have more publicity. But, really, how many people scower BTSs with searching for something damaging. Furthermore, information that accidentally got out on the Opera web site could easily be reclassified. Sent emails are trickier.

The risk is in automated systems that are not currently being used for this sort of thing, and there are a lot of issues to take into consideration. A slip-up would not merely lead to publicity, but could in a worst case scenario lead to a customer's data ending up in a competitor's hands. That might be unlikely, but "unlikely" probably isn't good enough when you are risking bankruptcy due to the resulting lawsuits. In other words, one would likely have to spend a lot of time and money on making sure that every possible hole is plugged.

This is merely one of many reasons why it's more complicated than you might think.

This is now five years ago (2007-2012). Is there any news on this front? A bug-tracker-system would be really useful for the purpose of seeing our reported bug being handled?

Originally posted by sgunhouse:

What is IE's bug tracker like?

I don't know the current status, but till Internet Explorer 8 - they did use to have an open (atleast publicly viewable and search-able - if not reply-able) via Microsoft Connect.
Right now, they seem to have Feedback tool to submit private feedback (in Microsoft's case; feedback = bugs AND suggestions); so voting and comments are not available - and it's unclear whether it's publicly viewable.

But even a publicly viewable bug tracker is better - atleast we know what bugs have been filed and not create duplicate bugs. And sometimes we could remind developers about it in the forums if it becomes a major issue (Core bugs for example - which can affect lot of sites).

Originally posted by haavard:

While I personally wouldn't mind giving people access to at least certain bug reports, there are many reasons why it's rather complicated, such as the danger of leaking highly sensitive information about a customer's (like a mobile vendor, for example) future product, leading to lawsuits against Opera for not protecting customer data.

Forget Opera Mobile and Mini - I agree lawsuits with mobile vendors are a great risk. Also Opera Mobile has significantly less bugs as Opera desktop.
What's the harm in making the Opera desktop bug tracker publicly viewable atleast?

Originally posted by Swapnil99pro:

What's the harm in making the Opera desktop bug tracker publicly viewable atleast?

... at least for all bugs that are reported for the public snapshots. No real secret functions in there and it isn't like as if the BTS couldn't recognize to which snapshot a bug belongs ...

...if it doesn't recognize it: Get a decent one

Originally posted by QuHno:

at least for all bugs that are reported for the public snapshots. No real secret functions in there and it isn't like as if the BTS couldn't recognize to which snapshot a bug belongs ...

So you are in favour of making the BTS public for Opera desktop snapshot builds and Labs builds?

yes, since 2001 or so...