Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!ncar!gatech!bloom-beacon!ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU!RWS From: RWS@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU (Robert Scheifler) Newsgroups: comp.windows.x Subject: Re: list of bug fixes Message-ID: <19880630181506.9.RWS@KILLINGTON.LCS.MIT.EDU> Date: 30 Jun 88 18:15:00 GMT References: <8103@elsie.UUCP> Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 23 Date: 30 Jun 88 13:27:23 GMT From: elsie!ado@cvl.umd.edu (Arthur David Olson) Here I've been sending off bug reports willy-nilly to xbugs@expo.lcs.mit.edu, only to learn now that the correct behavior is to "wait until the next release" before reporting noncritical bugs. I can't quite tell if you are confused or just being snide, and your comments may have confused others, so I'll take a chance and respond. We aren't suggesting you postpone reporting of bugs. We hope you will report bugs of all sorts as you find them. However, our experience has been that disseminating bug reports too widely is a big mistake, because "the public" tends to believe everything they read and will apply suggested "fixes" that tend to break more than they fix. I suspect the majority of people on this list don't really want to see the volume of bug mail we receive; xpert has a low enough signal to noise ratio already. If you don't like the fact that we don't immediately post any and all fixes we make, sorry. I think you'll find that is true of most organizations trying to maintain large software distributions. It is canonical that no matter how you provide as a free service, somebody will complain that it isn't enough.