Patches without copyright assignment (WAS: Making font-lock handle long lines better)

[Noam Postavsky]

On 15 May 2018 at 04:08, Jostein Kjønigsen <address@hidden> wrote:

>> Sounds like Bug#13369, although that report specifically mentions the
>> 'omake' element as the major culprit.
>>
>> https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=13369
>
>
> I know this isn't directly related to the original issue raised, and
> not to sound awfully negative...
>
> But if I understand this correctly this is a bug which was filed and
> debugged in 2013, half a decade ago, with a known fix, but the bug is
> still in the Emacs codebase.
>
> Why? Because whoever filed and diagnosed the bug in the first place
> can't/won't signed copyright assignment papers.

I think you misread, the unassigned code is a "regexp-to-rx translator",
not a fix for the bug.  Bug#19479 is better "poster-child" for this
problem.

> But seeing bugs like this, makes me ask some other questions:
>
> - Are there any systems in place to follow up "solved" bugs which
> doesn't result in commits?

Not specifically, no.  Not sure how they should be followed up
differently from normal open bugs though?

> - Do we know how many such bugs there currently are?

There's no official count.  My sense from going through the bug list is
that there are only a handful, perhaps a dozen at most.  Although there
could be more hypothetical cases, where someone didn't even try to make
a fix only because of the copyright issue.