[Tinyos Core WG] Bug policy

[Philip Levis]

I'm cross-posting this because I think it involves both WGs. On one  
hand, core is the WG that has to deal with the issues most. On the  
other, the policies could have big implications on the relationship  
of individuals to the WG process, so it's good to have alliance  
involved.

All of the issues with bug reporting and TinyOS boil down to this:  
what do we do when someone doesn't respond to bug reports assigned to  
them?

If the assignment is in error, the person can always reassign it;  
that's rarely the problem. Instead, we have bug reports which have  
been sitting on the tracker for years, with no response.

The current approach is that users post bug reports either to the  
sourceforge bug tracker or mail them to tinyos-help. Generally  
response on the latter is better than the former, but the mailing  
list doesn't provide a good mechanism to track whether they have been  
dealt with or not.

So here's the proposal:

We point users to the mailing list tinyos-bugs, and there's a web  
page giving some guidance on how you should report a bug. To have  
commit privileges to tinyos-2.x you must be on the list. There's one  
or more moderators who filter out spam. When a bug report comes in,  
anyone on the list can review it to decide if it is truly a bug. If  
it is, then that person enters it into the sourceforge bug tracker  
and assigns it to the most valid developer (who can reassign it if  
need be).

If a developer doesn't respond to a bug report (note: respond does  
not mean "fix", just acknowledge it and what's going on, the SF page  
has mechanisms for doing this) within 30 days, then we send a warning  
to the working group responsible for the subsystem it relates to. If  
there is no response to the bug in another week, then we do something  
drastic... (remove commit privileges for the WG?)

Phil