notifications back on topic [was: Money for Bugzilla development...]

[Joel Peshkin]

Madhava_Challa wrote:

>Hello All,
>
>I never knew my simple request for automatic e-mail notifications would stir
>such a strong discussion..
>
>This opens my eyes into the freebie world, which I always wondered how it
>ever worked..
>
>Anyway, let's continue the discussion.. It's interesting... Don't get me
>wrong, I am just getting more curious(er) . No Offence meant again..
>
>  
>
Nobody is offended (but please use the term "open source" which carries 
with it its connotations of a strong culture of peer review rather than 
"freebie" which carries with it connotiations of the junk people 
download from shareware sites).  Issues of how the development team 
maintains its direction while members of the team are being paid by 
parties with specific interests are very much analogous to the issues 
faces by scientific and medical policy groups when handling corporate 
sponsorship for the work.

To get back on track, thereare 2 bugs (76794 and 38922) which really 
should be merged together and both request that groups of people are 
either notified without being CCd or are CCd automatically as a function 
of the product/component a bug is in.  It seems quite natural that a 
comprehensive solution for this type of thing consider other triggers 
(such as a priority/severity change).

Since I am the developer who keeps an eye on the security needs of 
commercial users of bugzilla, I am putting on my group security hat. I 
would require the following of any proposal.....

1) It should be possible to disable the ability of users to configure 
watching for themselves independently of the administrator's ability to 
configure watching for users.

2) The watching functions must never permit someone to become 
automatically notified on something for which they could not search or 
become CCd on something to which they would not have been able to add 
themselves.

As you can see from the age of 76794 and 38922, these are handy 
functions that have never gotten a developer focussed on actually 
implementing them.  I expect that the developement team would welcome 
the contribution of code meeting all the necessary quality concerns. 
 You could either learn the structure of the code and make a 
contribution yourself or hire someone.  Several of the team members are 
listed on the consultants page and hiring one of them for such a task 
would be a very effective way to make it happen.  

-Joel