When to set VERIFIED in BugZilla?

[Alessio Maria Braccini]

> Right, this is a very burocratic (formal) process.

Yes, it is: the quality as described by Total Quality Management or ISO 9001.

> There is no QA in KDE currently. There are no volunteers for the hard
> (and technical) work of designing such programm, and no volunteers for
> doing the massive work of following all bugs.
> Currently there are not enough people to even manage the bugs we have
> properly. So why not start with something simple (managing bugs), and
> when this is well handled, try the next step?

> You are asking if a QA team can be formed with "user defined rules"
> instead of "technical rules". I am not a specialist, but I think no,
> because there is no such a thing as "user defined rules". The "User" is a
> mithological entity: in real life, each user has a different opinion.
> Also, QA is a technical process by definition, so it is impossible to
> have a non technical QA process.

I totally agree with you, you can move to more complex tasks when you're done 
with all the other that may be simpler.
Quality can be defined in two different manner: customer satisfaction or 
conformity to requirements. If requirements are written for customer 
satisfaction both of them are the same. The user is not a mithological entity 
is the one who uses the final product, and in open-source you can have 
immediate contact with it, because he can submit bug reports or write to ask 
for information. There are also users that don't do nothing, but if you look 
at internet forums or mailing lists you see many people talking or writing. I 
didn't mean that QA teams should deal with user defined rules, but i meant 
that QA teams should work for user's need.

> Also, in free software, you depend on people's will, not on hierachy. So
> if an arbitrary group of people (let's call them "users") wants to change
> the direction of a project, they can do so only by convincing the
> developers using good arguments (or good bug reports). Something that
> does not motivate people to work is useless, unless the interested group
> hires someone to do it.

This is true, but not so bad as you may think. In Japan, where quality 
philosophies were firstly developed and grown, most of the work was done by 
volunteer staff. I think it is also true that there is no Quality Assurance 
in KDE, nor in lots (or all) other open-source project: but maybe there is no 
Quality Assurance as we use to see in companies and commercial business 
reality. Why do open-source fans say that open-source software quality is 
better? It must deal with the way this software is produced i think, and 
something in its production process may work as a quality planning, quality 
assurance (or wathever).
As i wrote on my first mail in this list, i'm working at a research for an 
Italian university on open source and quality, so i'm interested in this 
arguments. I apologize if I speak too much about these philosophical 
arguments, i don't want to be OT (is this supposed to be a technical only 
mailing list?) but i do really appreciate every mail on this topic.

Bye. Alessio