On Friday February 28th, Linden Lab announced that the JIRA is to be re-opened to public scrutiny.

The changes will be occurring in week 10 (week commencing Monday March 3rd), and follow hard of the heels of a series of comments by Ebbe Altberg on the subject, made in a forum thread. welcoming him to Linden Lab.

The announcement, in a technology and tools blog post, indicates that:

All users will be able to see all BUG issues, all the time

All users will be able to comment prior to a report being triaged; post tiraging, reports will open to comment only by the original reporter, LL staff and those from the community (TPV developers and others selected by Linden Lab for having demonstrated skills in this area)

to a report being triaged; post tiraging, reports will open to comment only by the original reporter, LL staff and those from the community (TPV developers and others selected by Linden Lab for having demonstrated skills in this area) The “New Feature Request” is back.

The blog post points to a set of guidelines for participation that need to be followed when commenting on JIRA reports.

The announcement hails the re-opening by stating:

Today, we’re happy to announce some changes to our JIRA implementation – the system we use to collect, track, and take action on bugs reported by users. You’ll see these changes take effect next week.

Recently, this system was working in a way that wasn’t very transparent, and it frankly wasn’t a good experience for the users who care enough about Second Life to try to help improve it, nor was it the best set-up for the Lindens tasked with addressing these issues. So you can see why we’re happy to be changing it!

That the JIRA has been re-opened is welcome news, and that there has been an attempt to meet the needs of those wishing to comment on reports half-way is also to be welcomed. However, of equally good news is the fact that the new feature request capability has been returned to the system, again as the blog post states:

If you’ve got a great idea for a feature, you don’t need to slip it through the system disguised as a bug report – just select the “New Feature Request” category when you submit. Commenting for this category will work just like for bug reports, and submitting improvements through this category will make things much easier for the Linden team reviewing these.

There is also a reminder as to the purpose of the JIRA:

Please remember that JIRA is an engineering tool – it’s not meant for policy discussions and the like nor is it a replacement for the Forums, where you can have all kinds of stimulating discussions.

Those wishing to give feedback on the move can do so via a forum thread created specifically for this purpose.