Downstreams: Please work with your users and your upstreams

To whom it may concern

If you are reading this, it's quite possibly because you're involved in a downstream, possibly as a triager or owner. This memo is to explain the roles of end users and downstreams wrt upstream bugs.

Normal users

... will report bugs to the first site they can find. They will not spend time trying to create accounts with hundreds of bug trackers or hunt down the right one.

... are at best familiar with their source of software- typically they get it by installing a distribution.

... do not care about lines of responsibility - as far as they are concerned, what they have came from their "distributor" (it probably has a short and shiny name too). That distributor has a bug tracker, they may be able to find it. If they manage to find that tracker, and submit a bug (which is painful), they consider themselves to have done their good deed. The rest is up to you.

Please understand that just because someone reports a bug (or twenty) doesn't mean they're paid to work on your project.

Downstream project members

You are working on a project which is shipping code. You want the code you ship to not have bugs. If you discover a bug in the code and it affects your product, you want to get that fixed, that means you should take the effort to get it fixed. That involves sending the bug to someone you know who can help.

You can help because you work on this project.

What should you remember?