Closing bugs just because they're old is not cool

Two bug reports that I wrote were recently closed with the following explanation:

Last message was posted nearly three years ago. Considering abandoned and closing.

Whoops, I thought, I must have missed a request for more information. So I went to the bug page and, nope, the only message on the bug was my initial report.

Let me repeat that: the total sequence of interactions on these bugs was:

1. I report a bug in 2004
   
2. Someone closes it in 2007 because it's "too old".
   

Now, there are times when it's at least somewhat excusable to close old bugs without verifying that they're fixed (or even knowing that they might not be). When a package has hundreds of bug reports, closing old bugs that can't be reproduced can be a good thing: even if the reports are valid, keeping reports that can't contribute towards a fix around is arguably less useful than cleaning out the bug list so it's usable.

In my case, though, the package in question has only 20 or so bug reports, an easily managed number. Worse, both bugs I reported could be trivially reproduced. One of them was arguably not a bug, but the guy who closed my bugs did not argue that; as far as I can tell, he didn't even look at my bug report.


Notice that I haven't mentioned the maintainer of the package? That's because he didn't close the bug. In fact, the person who closed the bug is not a member of Debian, nor is he in the NM process. Evidently he's just a random user who decided that old bugs offend him, so they should be closed.

So please, everyone, exercise a modicum of common sense when it comes to closing bug reports. This will keep the BTS useful for all of us and keep blood pressures at a reasonable level. :)