Ticket #7034

[David Woolley]

Fluteman wrote:
> This ticket is 4 years old.  What's it take to get it handled?

Pidgin is maintained by voluntary effort.  As you didn't provide a link 
I haven't looked this up to see if there is some other reason why it is 
not being acted upon, but generally, they only certain way of getting 
anything fixed is for you to contribute the tested code yourself.  A 
summary of the issue in your posting might also have given me a clue as 
to why nothing had been done.

(Some things will not get done because they require access to 
proprietary information.  Some will not get done because they would be 
incompatible with the licensing of Pidgin.  Some may not get done 
because people think they are the wrong thing for Pidgin to do.  However 
a lot of things don't get done simply because no-one with the time, 
skills, legal ability, and inclination to donate code thinks them 
important enough.)

Note that multiple independent reports of a problem will often increase 
the priority.

Incidentally, this also applies in the commercial software world.  There 
will be a lot of "bug" reports that never get effort assigned to them 
because effort is in short supply and they are just not important 
enough.   The main difference in open source, is that anyone who thinks 
they are important enough can contribute a solution - they don't have to 
get project management approval.  Fixing problems tends to reduce with 
the age, as, if they have lasted unfixed that long, they are not 
impacting the sales of the product.

-- 
David Woolley
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