Not really a nice comment but a real issue?

[Johan Vos]

Hi John, all,

Clearly, there are advantages and disadvantages to the Oracle Web form.
It's not a black/white situation.
We need to find a solution that combines the advantages of being accessible
as well as not creating false expectations.

I really like the JBS system, it is very powerful and flexible. For
example, we now semi-automatically create the release notes for JavaFX
using a script. Once you have an account there, it serves its purposes.
But I agree, the barrier for non-JDK authors to submit a bug is too high,
resulting in issues being reported in random places, not always in a nice
way. Hence, I think we need to provide something easier, without giving up
the power of JBS. Actually, I am in favor of keeping JBS as it is, as its
benefits are mainly relevant *after* an issue is entered. The question then
moves to *how* issues are entered, and I agree the webform isn't the best
way for this.
The transformation between "how" issues are created and then how they are
tracked is currently done manually at Oracle, and that is something that
might be done in a more open, collaborative way. It's not fun work though,
but I agree transparency would help here, and if the JavaFX community can
help the Oracle folks with triaging OpenJFX bugs, that sounds like a
win-win to me.

One of the things I want to avoid is a random "report" that shows part of a
stacktrace, with the reporter not giving more information. That issue would
then become a stale issue, giving a bad impression.
If those issues pile up in a public issue tracker. So how do we manage
expectations, avoiding nasty tweets like "I told them there was an issue
and after 2 years it's still there!"

In summary, I believe we need to separate a few things:
* JBS: we use this as issue tracker, where we track, monitor, label, set
versions, link to other issues, with different possible workflows. I think
there is no alternative for this, and that's not needed.
* bug-report system: I'm all in to find a more accessible way, keeping into
account that would require work being done by the community (hence, us) for
converting issues into high-quality JBS issues.

- Johan



On Tue, Mar 23, 2021 at 7:28 AM John Neffenger <john at status6.com> wrote:

> On 3/22/21 3:27 PM, Philip Race wrote:
> > I am informed that, for no reason given, the corporate IT folks will not
> > allow attachment upload.
>
> Thank you for looking into it, Phil. It's good at least to have a
> definitive answer. I brought this up on the mailing list three years
> ago, too:
>
> Re: More community participation in JavaFX
>
> https://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/openjfx-dev/2018-February/021343.html
>
> I eventually created those bug reports, despite all the gate-keeping. In
> fact, I'm even starting to think there could be advantages to having
> pull requests as the only real way to participate in the OpenJFX
> project. A flood of easily-created issues on GitHub can be just as
> off-putting as that Oracle Web form.
>
> John
>