Well, I don't know if Andre and the guys are paid for this.

Are they?
Or they're just doing it out of pure goodwill for the community?

As part of the core maemo.org team Karsten and me get paid for this (indirectly by Nokia).
Bugsquad itself is on voluntarily basis (and a huge help!)

Thanks for all the flowers!

Now dumping my personal list of thoughts here now that I had in mind when starting this thread:

The bad:
* maemo.org bug 630 (Get developers involved) - hard to change internal company culture from outside - bit of progress but still very far away from where it should be and where I want it to be
* the "Fixed in Fremantle" frustration for Diablo users (though there's not much I could do - Nokia's decisions and I hope they learned something)

The good:
* Bugs get triaged and you get feedback, not the feeling anymore that Bugzilla is abandoned
* Nokia has a useful and valuable feedback channel from real users (bug reports themselves and the weekly internal report I send to Nokia Error Management)
* Bugsquad created (cool people and fun to work with)
* monthly Feature Jar partially based on Stephen's great weekly jars helping Nokia Product Management to prioritize users' wishes

I am new member here, but for my understanding bug masters are doing great job. Keeping their tone professional and informative. Especially Andre always makes an entrance in the right moment ;-)
Keep the momentum guys!

Well, Andre, not having a divisive issue like Mer under your name makes for less interesting feedback, I suppose. As I doubted whether you'd really appreciate "You've been doing a kickass job, dude!" as feedback, I've been thinking about this one for the past few days.

Let me start out by saying, "You've been doing a kickass job, dude!" You're in a hard position, one that, I believe, is likely more difficult than any Nokia employee or other Maemo Community member occupies. You're stuck between a rock (Nokia) and a hard place (the community), with both parties using you to do their dirty work and shovel their **** around. Nokia uses you communicate all of their terrible decisions to the masses, the community makes you advocate for all of their unpopular positions to Nokia, and you end up dealing with a lot of unpleasantness on both sides for things you're not responsible for.

As bad as that all is, it doesn't include the hours a day toiling through boring-as-all-get-out, and often useless, bug reports from reporters who are frequently just looking for a support channel or a place to vent their overactive spleens; nor playing the only communication link between the internal and external Bugzillas, copying information both ways—by hand—to make sure the duplicated trackers are in sync to support Nokia's outdated and inefficient tracking policies.

Now this is a bleak picture I've painted and I know you don't see it that way, and I know it has its fair share of position and gratifying work too—you're making people feel like somebody cares about their software issues, you're helping them learn valuable new skills, and you're helping to make Maemo and maemo.org an awesome software platform and an awesome place to be, but I've had glimpses into your world, and I don't think I could ever handle it with as much calm and thoroughness as you do.

Enough smoke blowing, on to the productive:

There are a few areas where I'd like to see improvements (though most aren't your fault).

First, 3.4 is taking forever. Somebody needs to get Tero to give Karsten more hours if that needs to happen, and somebody needs to kick Karsten's *** into getting this work onto a public CVS and being open about what's happening.

Second, I'm worried that you're ending up an enabler for Nokia's closed practices. You're making it too easy for them to keep operating as they are. Notice that Nokia has improved very little in their processes over the past couple years, yet the quality and quantity of incoming reports is higher than ever and they're actually getting a lot of useful information out of them (whether they actually look externally or not, thanks to your efforts ). With recent MeeGo-related developments, though, it's also likely entirely pointless to worry about this, as so much will be changing in the next 6 months—both for the better and the ill (will Harmattan even have an external bug tracker? ). But it's, perhaps, something to ponder on as we move forward.

Third, engagement with the Bugsquad is unfortunately still low. You're still doing the vast majority of the heavy lifting (which stands to reason, as you're the only one getting paid for it—but still). Looking at ways we could help improve this for MeeGo in the future is something to think about.

Well, that was a long time simmering, hopefully it's somewhat useful. In summary: Thanks, Andre.

Great job, no complaints, keep it up!

(Dropping those parts where I agree anyway, or have nothing to add.)

Yeah, I've been waiting for your feedback on this topic I have to admit.

I consider it part of my job to deal with this, however I can really always leave publishing such decisions to Quim if I wanted.
I sometimes leave it to Quim when it comes to complicated non-technical management decisions why Nokia does not want to fix/support something (and I don't know whether it's good or not if I make them public), or when the internal reason for a WONTFIX is so ridiculous that it would make Nokia look really bad in public. (I at least have one such case in mind where I'd love to yell at some people for a ******ed software architecture in a specific Maemo area. Don't ask for details).

The number of people looking for support in Bugzilla (instead of filing "real" software bugs) is really acceptable in my opinion.
Also I can always answer "Please go to the forum at talk.maemo.org for your configuration issue which does not look like a software bug".
People should avoid but of course should not be afraid to accidentially ask in the wrong place and get redirected.

Fixing https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8132 once 3.4 is in place should help a bit.

I'm currently wondering how aggressive I can/should be when it comes to the stupid "copy & paste" part of my job and when it would become counter-productive.

So far when appropriate I internally write "For future reference please directly ask the original reporter in bugs.maemo.org."
I consider changing this to "Is there a reason why you asked here instead of asking directly in bugs.maemo.org?"
I've been considering this and I'm expecting some managers to answer "We've always had our internal bugtracker and it simply is the unique place where things happen" so I'm currently discussing how to "successfully forcing" them to get into direct contact in bugs.maemo.org. Imagine people with an S60 series background that nowadays work on open source, but are not used to the corresponding open source culture with its community and its expectations and involvements.

Things have improved a little bit in the last months (I'm sometimes positively surprised seeing some Nokians commenting in bugs.maemo.org), but way not enough to make me content or to say "Mission accomplished". Way to go.

Up to Karsten to answer this.

I'm also sometimes worried about this.

Nokia's (technical!) processes work well for Nokia.

Nokia might gain advantages by becoming more open (e.g. earlier testing, faster bugfixing, better PR) and Nokia might gain disadvantages by it (for example a public bugtracker that might be noisy and hence waste some time of developers and managers).

I think currently it's still about proofing that the community feedback is (mostly) valuable.
The question is who can decide how to define when this "testing period" is over and how to move on from there, and which concrete and iterative steps can improve the situation ("iterative" as you cannot quickly and completely change a system in a large company that works well for them) and how to proof this (facts & numbers).

Let me start out by saying, "You've been doing a kickass job, dude!" I would also copy plenty more parts of GeneralAntilles post but this could be seen just as a lack of imagination as opposed to fully agreement...

Having Andre here is one of the best things that could happen to the Maemo project. Honestly, my main concern is not to get him burnt out one day.

You don't need to deal with Nokia's <del>****</del> $STUFFYOUDISAGREE, others like me are paid for that.

Bug #630, it's been a while now that I have been defending (based on experience) that direct involvement of developers in Bugzilla needs to go together with open development. There has actually been quite a lot of progress with open development thanks to MeeGo and I expect to have the fix for Bug #630 in that context. (maybe this is not the answer you wanted to hear but this is the onle I believe in)

sjgadsby and his Bug Jars is also one of the best things that could happen to the Maemo project. There is a before and an after. You can feel the void now without any MeeGo Bug Jars (apparently a void to be filled quite soon - thanks in advance!).

Let me also tell that both the raw Bug Jars and the weekly reports sent by Andre to the Fremantle program at Nokia are being very useful to prioritize bugs for maintenance updates. While the first PR releases still have some weight coming from the internal testing done during the development of the first Maemo 5 release, the more we go forward the more we let the agenda of the maintenance releases be driven by the bugs filed by real users, and your opinions about what matters most.

There is a word that sums up the work Andre and sjgadsby are driving with the bugsquad: Bravo! Yes, a lot more can be done involving volunteers but, then again, this is a deep problem in many community projects, even those successful and fully open. If there are actions from our side that can be done in order to get a more solid Bugsquad team please let us know.

PS: Just discovered that there *is* a MeeGo Bug Jar starting today! http://www.listware.net/201005/meego...ar-201019.html

Off Topic: Yes, but does this help us at all in the Harmattan timeframe?

I still don't know, honestly. Finding the place(s) and best way(s) to handle Harmattan related bugs is in the top sector of my ToDo list. Part of defining the relationship between pure MeeGo and Harmattan + upstream vs downstream bug reporting tools. I'll try to find some time and open a new thread at forum.meego.com.