cannot see bug #731773

the bug you refer to that you cannot see is a private bug and cannot be made public

Thanks for the explanation.
I still want to get some info on the issue, can you help?

Several bugs reported by users were dismissed as duplicates.
Therefore one cannot learn from these public bugs what is the cause and when will be fixed.

The only bug that is supposed to be active is private.
Why it "cannot be made public"?
Is it a technical limitation?
Or a policy that says so?

For the sake of this discussion, let's assume it's acceptable to have private bugs in an FOSS project.

Then I think that public bugs should not point to private bugs.
It's confusing and frustrating for the users.

For now, can you give me a chance to learn what was decided regarding the bugs I mentioned?

Thanks,
Alex.

The reason it's private is because it has crash data (eg. tracebacks with local variables) that may contain sensitive information from the reporter's system. We can't sensibly make that data public. The implementation of apport today turns that private bug into the master bug. The bug is private for a very good reason.

OK, then the sensitive information should be in private _attachments_ of a public bug.
Probably this is not supported yet, I can understand that.

Is there a plan to support private attachments to public bugs?

Anyway, several public bugs reported by users were dismissed as duplicates of a private bug.
Therefore one cannot learn from these public bugs what is the cause and when will be fixed.

The (unintended) result is that the issue was put out of reach of users.

Is there any way to learn about the status of bug #731773 ?

Having it private makes it very unlikely that I try to fix it since I would have to work in the dark, not knowing what was already tried and maybe rejected (and why).

Thanks,
Alex.

On 15/06/13 21:46, Alexandru Nedel wrote:
> OK, then the sensitive information should be in private _attachments_ of a public bug.
> Probably this is not supported yet, I can understand that.
>
> Is there a plan to support private attachments to public bugs?

There are no plans to support private attachments on public bugs. It
would be confusing, have limited uses, and give great potential for
leaks if someone forgot the difference and pasted some of the content
into the bug.

> Anyway, several public bugs reported by users were dismissed as duplicates of a private bug.
> Therefore one cannot learn from these public bugs what is the cause and when will be fixed.
>
> The (unintended) result is that the issue was put out of reach of users.
>
> Is there any way to learn about the status of bug #731773 ?
>
> Having it private makes it very unlikely that I try to fix it since I
> would have to work in the dark, not knowing what was already tried and
> maybe rejected (and why).

Having the master be private is certainly problematic, but this is not a
problem with Launchpad.
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apport/+bug/764414> asks that
Ubuntu's crash reporter, apport, not send users into this situation in
the first place. If you ask in #ubuntu-bugs on irc.freenode.net, someone
might be able to make it public for you.

Thank you, Laura and William.

Now I understand the process better.
I don't think there is much I can do regarding that crash.