Mozilla Crosses 800,000 Filed Bugs

News
By Wolfgang Gruener
published

Mozilla's busy Firefox developer community submitted Bugzilla bug number 800,000 on October 10.

That is almost 800,000 reported bugs in more than 14 years of the history of Bugzilla (I am mentioning "almost" since the bug count does not start with bug number "1", but with bug number "507"). Of course, Firefox does not reach quite that far back as the first pre-release version did not arrive until September 2002 and the first final release until November 2004. Bugzilla's origins date back to 1998 when the bugtracker was released as open source software by Netscape.

Nevertheless, the number of bugs filed by Firefox developers is impressive.

Of the 799,493 listed bugs (until October 10), more than half a million (530,953) were filed between the release of Firefox 1 on November 9, 2004 and October 10, 2012. Prior to the release of the first final browser, the database already included 268,033 bugs. The most recent 100,000 bugs were filed between November 4, 2011 and October 10, 2012. That bug filing rate puts the Mozilla community on a pace of 293 bugs filed per day.

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Wolfgang Gruener
12 Comments Comment from the forums
  • uglynerdman
    what?! over 9000?!
    Reply
  • rohitbaran
    A number not to be proud of I guess.
    Reply
  • mrmaia
    Well, at least Mozilla devs work hard to fix all those bugs and deliver a better free product to everyone, not to mention most of those bugs aren't critical anyway. It's completely different from another company, who blocks out all competitors only to release a hardly usable app in their overpriced smartphone.
    Reply
  • apple_120
    @rohitbaran, not quite what you think...

    Mozilla tracks _ALL_ modifications in their bugzilla tracking system. So this is not just problems but also enhancements.

    This also tracks work as diverse as creating new webpages, submitting and implementing standards and outreach to various websites.

    It is simply a way for an organization that is extremely diffuse around the world to keep track of all the work going on. Truely impressive!
    Reply
  • jhansonxi
    apple_120This also tracks work as diverse as creating new webpages, submitting and implementing standards and outreach to various websites.+1
    I have submitted bug reports about Mozilla/Firefox not working with some web sites due to bad HTML or scripting. Many bugs are duplicates and some bugs only affect a specific user due to conflicting programs on their system (like malware).
    Reply
  • svdb
    It rohitbaranA number not to be proud of I guess. It only matters how many bugs you fix, compared to how many are opened each period of time. One of the important metrics in software development is velocity, not quantity.
    Reply
  • rohitbaran
    apple_120@rohitbaran, not quite what you think...Mozilla tracks _ALL_ modifications in their bugzilla tracking system. So this is not just problems but also enhancements.This also tracks work as diverse as creating new webpages, submitting and implementing standards and outreach to various websites.It is simply a way for an organization that is extremely diffuse around the world to keep track of all the work going on. Truely impressive!Oh, then it is indeed impressive.
    Reply
  • A Bad Day
    Two ways of improving a software:

    1. Take the users' complaints seriously, and fix the bugs ASAP.

    2. Deny. Deny. Deny.
    Reply
  • I don't know is this something to brag about?
    Reply
  • pjmelect
    Why is it that all of the bugs I have seen with Firefox have never been fixed? I started reporting some of them but got little feedback so I don't bother any more.
    Reply