I checked the Debian firefox bugs page and noticed a new bug was reported against firefox. Checking the bug report showed the bug is new as it reported against version 3.0b5. As there’s now firefox package in debian testing/unstable that was weired enough.
Reading the bug report revealed these details:
Package: firefox
Version: 3.0~b5+nobinonly-0ubuntu3
and
Debian Release: lenny/sid
500 hardy-updates us.archive.ubuntu.com
500 hardy-security security.ubuntu.com
500 hardy us.archive.ubuntu.com
I mailed the user to see why does he reports Ubuntu’s bugs to Debian. He replied that he’s using the reportbug-ng program and wasn’t aware that his bug have been sent to Debian.
I check the reportbug and reportbug-ng in Ubuntu and found that reportbug has the needed patch for Ubuntu:
diff -pruN 3.39/reportbug.conf 3.39ubuntu3/reportbug.conf
--- 3.39/reportbug.conf 2004-12-06 13:59:04.000000000 +0000
+++ 3.39ubuntu3/reportbug.conf 2007-10-25 07:22:47.000000000 +0100
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
# severity normal# BTS to use
-#bts debian
+bts ubuntu
# See ‘reportbug –bts help’ for a current list of supported BTSes# Submission address: default is ‘submit’
but since hardy reportbug-ng package in Ubuntu is identical to the one in Debian.
$ rmadison -u ubuntu reportbug-ng
reportbug-ng | 0.2007.10.30~feisty1 | feisty-backports/universe | source, all
reportbug-ng | 0.2007.06.27 | gutsy/universe | source, amd64, i386, powerpc
reportbug-ng | 0.2007.10.30~gutsy1 | gutsy-backports/universe | source, all
reportbug-ng | 0.2007.10.30 | hardy/universe | source, all
reportbug-ng | 0.2008.03.28 | intrepid/universe | source, all
Doing more checks reveals that this is a known problem in Ubuntu and is already reported at Bug #175508. This was also discussed three weeks ago on “Ubuntu Open Week – Reporting Bugs“.
A quick look at the reportbug-ng code makes it clear that reportbug-ng will require more work to support the Ubuntu BTS. There were also some comments about the configuration for Ubuntu in reportbug, as it just send the reports to ubuntu-users mailing list and not to the real BTS at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/.
I’m still not sure what to do about the bug. On one hand, that package originates in Debian, and the bug is probably relevant. On the other hand, the cause might be a change from Ubuntu. In any case, I
don’t see the user following our BTS, and I don’t way to fixed package (if and when created) to propagate to Ubuntu.
Free Software Universe 
Are you sure that the packages of firefox 3 is originated from the Debian one?
We don’t have anymore a ‘firefox’ source package, we switched to Iceweasel.. they have a different source package in theyr repos, and if you may question that “iceweasel is firefox whithout the logo” i’ll point that they’re using firefox 3, not firefox 2 that is version used by debian for the iceweasel sources…
So you should keep in mind that bug if the upcoming Iceweasel release will suffer the same behaviour, but for the time being that isn’t a debian bug.
I will tell the reporter that he needs to go complains with ubuntu’s maintainer and stab in the face ubuntu’s reportbug-ng maintainers.
You’re right. My mistake. I thought they work more closely about this package. But from the changelog it seems the last sync was just before 2.0.0.
I’ll close the bugs in questions as the two package probably diverse too much.
I came to the same problem not too much time ago when an Ubuntu user complained in our local LUG mailing list about a bug. We couldn’t find the root of it, so I told him to fill the bug against the package. I suggested reportbug for the task… and received a mail from the user saying that he did not send the problem because the mail was going to be sent to DBTS…
A fair bit of discussion has been going on on IRC about this. Given that reportbug-ng is not compatible with Ubuntu users, and neither are preferred, the reason Ubuntu keeps them around is so that developers can report package bugs to Debian.
For Ubuntu users who want to report bugs to Ubuntu developers, there’s a tool called apport, that sends a great deal of useful information and knows how to commuicated with LP. And it should come up when an application crashes. Still, some users (perhaps with the misguided help of Lisandro) find the reportbug landmine.
At any rate, this bug is almost certainly flash related, and thus probably not a high Debian priority. Getting an LP account and filing a bug and following up on it is the way to get it fixed in Ubuntu, if at all possible. At some point I think it would be nice to explore gnash by default.
reportbug-ng is originally written to work with Debian’s bug tracker system and Ubuntu has its own system. So you should use another package instead of wondering why reportbug-ng doesn’t behave correctly. 🙂