My Trsyt with BugZilla

I have never really got my hands dirty in the Licensed -vs- Open source Software debates, that ravage all over the internet. But somewhere in my heart I always rooted for Open Source. Its the perennial underdog, with public unity and diversity propelling it.

But, my perceptions took a bit of a beating yesterday when I got my hands dirty trying to get Bugzilla, the open source free licensed Bug Tracking Software from the Mozilla stable. Its a free download from the web and is supposed to be THE big buzz.

I located the step by step install instructions on bugzilla.org site and rubbed my hands in glee to get a top class Bug tracking software running for my project.. FREE. A day later I realize its not a cake-walk.

The issues with Open source, more specifically Bugzilla and its installation, as I perceived are immense.

1. No Consolidate Package. There is just no 1 single package that can be downloaded and installed (on XP or even Linux) Bugzilla. So you download Bugzilla, Active PERL, MySQL Database, Apache web server and after that you are only just begun on your way.

2. Version Issues. All of these 'components' are open source too. So you need to figure out which version is what you really need. You realize, thanks to lots of documentation on Support site, that certain versions of ActivePerl or MySQL have bugs that block Bugzilla functionality. So you need to be really careful in picking the versions you download.

3. The Step by Step guides are good, but not great. A lot of the steps are for prev versions, and the UI/ Interfaces have changed since then. Plus, so much is assumed that you need to 'know' stuff like MySQL and PERL to proceed. I messed up my installation because I checked a setting in MySQL called 'Strict SQL', which ironically was a recommended setting. That dint allow Bugzilla CGI to execute on my webserver.

4. Lacking Customizability. Eventually when I have Bugzilla up and running, I realize, that Bugzilla is not really great in Customizability. Its open source, so you can hack what you want. But thats different. You cant customize a lot of stuff on a running instance. Now, thats just a bad quality for a software. No amount of 'openess' can shield it.

The biggest issue for me was the complicated installation. Had it all been 1 package, it makes the life a lot simpler. You just run through 1 installer and not worry about picking relevant versions etc.

I think whatever might the Open Source champions claim, the day when masses shall use Open source software are still far away. Open Source SW might be free and easy to configure, but for now, its still geek friendly. It still lacks User oriented features. Open source advocates always talk about bugs ravaging licensed software, but the fact is as long as the Software has lots of useful and revelant features and they mostly run fine, we are happy. If you write a very compact application that doesnt do much but doesnt have a lot of bugs, its still not what we want.

To end this post, well, I have got my Bugzilla up and running and discovered some does and dont along the way too. The Application, while might not allow me all the customizability, should still serve our purpose.