- The developers of BusyBox are busy people, and have only so much they can - keep in their brains at a time. As a result, bug reports and new feature - patches sometimes get lost when posted to the mailing list. To prevent - your bug report from getting lost, if you find a bug in BusyBox that isn't - immediately addressed, please use the BusyBox Bug and Patch Tracking System - to submit a detailed explanation and we'll get to it as soon as we can. + Bug reports and new feature patches sometimes get lost when posted to the + mailing list, because the developers of BusyBox are busy people and have + only so much they can keep in their brains at a time. You can post a + polite reminder after 2-3 days without offending anybody. If that doesn't + result in a solution, please use the + BusyBox Bug + and Patch Tracking System to submit a detailed explanation and we'll + get to it as soon as we can.
++ Note that bugs entered into the bug system without being mentioned on the + mailing list first may languish there for months before anyone even notices + them. We generally go through the bug system when preparing for new + development releases, to see what fell through the cracks while we were + off writing new features. (It's a fast/unreliable vs slow/reliable thing. + Saves retransits, but the latency sucks.) +
+ +Variants of this one get asked a lot.
+ +The purpose of the BusyBox mailing list is to develop and improve BusyBox, +and we're happy to respond to our users' needs. But if you're coming to the +list for free tech support we're going to ask you to upgrade to a current +version before we try to diagnose your problem.
+ +If you're building BusyBox 0.50 with uClibc 0.9.19 and gcc 0.9.26 there's a +fairly large chance that whatever problem you're seeing has already been fixed. +To get that fix, all you have to do is upgrade to a newer version. If you +don't at least _try_ that, you're wasting our time.
+ +The volunteers are happy to fix any bugs you point out in the current +versions because doing so helps everybody and makes the project better. We +want to make the current version work for you. But diagnosing, debugging, and +backporting fixes to old versions isn't something we do for free, because it +doesn't help anybody but you. The cost of volunteer tech support is using a +reasonably current version of the project.
+ +If you don't want to upgrade, you have the complete source code and thus +the ability to fix it yourself, or hire a consultant to do it for you. If you +got your version from a vendor who still supports the older version, they can +help you. But there are limits as to what the volunteers will feel obliged to +do for you.
+ +As a rule of thumb, volunteers will generally answer polite questions about +a given version for about three years after its release before it's so old +we don't remember the answer off the top of our head. And if you want us to +put any _effort_ into tracking it down, we want you to put in a little effort +of your own by confirming it's still a problem with the current version. It's +also hard for us to fix a problem of yours if we can't reproduce it because +we don't have any systems running an environment that old.
+ +A consultant will happily set up a special environment just to reproduce +your problem, and you can always ask on the list if any of the developers +have consulting rates.
+