539084 - Extend AMO with a "I can fix this"-functionality for broken extensions (reported by ACR)

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 278234

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Compatibility Tools, enhancement)

Description

[Benedikt Pfeifer]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20091221 Firefox/3.5.7
Build Identifier: 

Task: make old extensions usable again, so people aren't blocked from upgrading if they need a certain extension.

Suggested solution: Let anyone patch broken extension if the original author doesn't take care of it himself.

How to: Having the Add-on compatibility reporter already to report incompatibilies, it would be a great thing if in the following would happen:

1. It is confirmed (or precisely not) that the extension is broken (skip rest if not;)

2. The original extension author gets an email on the broken extension

3. If the author doesn't respond (* see below) within a certain range of time (e.g. two weeks for example), then the incompatibility will be shown on the website and additionally (the great idea;) an "I can fix this"-link will appear. This would allow anyone to submit a fix for this extension which would undergo the review process as any update that the original author would submit.


(*) respond = submits a new version OR maybe even clicks a sort of WILL FIX IT SOON button, that allows to postpone the rest of the process mentioned above by some time (e.g. for another two weeks)


I think it might help to fix a lot of problems (even though it is some work to implement). I still hope you like it.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

This would be nice for the future, but I don't think it can happen anytime soon:
* Add-on compatibility reports are often misleading and we're still working on how to make them more reliable

* Add-ons can only be modified like that if they have an open source license, and even then it would require creating a new add-on entry, as we can't give another author access to an add-on's users without that author's permission.

* A "broken add-on" means different things to different people. One person thinks an add-on is broken without one feature and someone else thinks an add-on is broken with that feature.

So, while this is a nice idea, I don't think it's really feasible.

Comment 2

[Jorge Villalobos [:jorgev] (he/him)]

Duplicate of bug 278234?