Comment 4 for bug 123414

I just tried to use reportbug 3.39ubuntu3 on Hardy, and I got this failure.

Hm... Scanning the bugs of the reportbug package in Hardy, it appears to me that what is going on is that Ubuntu developers use it to report bugs to Debian, but that it has never worked for Ubuntu users (I see some bug reports including ones that I contributed to from four years ago). This makes me angry that Ubuntu developers have decided to leave something lying around which is labelled as a tool that I can use to report bugs, so then I spend my precious time writing up bug reports for you, and then the tool wastes my bug reports. Don't you respect my time more than that? There is a simple solution: add one sentence to the package description which says "THIS IS NOT FOR USERS TO REPORT BUGS IN UBUNTU -- THIS IS USED ONLY BY UBUNTU DEVELOPERS TO REPORT BUGS IN DEBIAN.".

Now, something else that I have noticed is that over the last four or so years, many people have many times requested that Ubuntu stop distributing this "broken" reportbug which leads users to think that they can use it to report bugs and then silently wastes their bug reports. (See e.g. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/reportbug/+bug/228183 ). What happens every time is this: a user asks Ubuntu to stop distributing this broken tool which wastes their precious time, then some other people say "Oh, but we should *really* fix Ubuntu bug reporting this way or that way.", and then nothing gets done. The solution to this, too is simple: *first* fix the problem that reportbug is wasting people's time and their goodwill, by either removing it from Ubuntu or at the very least by adding the warning message to the package description as mentioned above. *Then* start thinking about how to fix various problems, such as the fact that old versions of reportbug are still distributed in older Ubuntu releases, and how to make a good reportbug-alike that works for Ubuntu, and so forth.

Got that? Do not reply to this message with talk about how to improve reportbug. Instead, add the aforementioned warning message or remove reportbug from Ubuntu. Then reply to this message talking about how to make a new improved one. Thank you.