Bugzilla environment for tracking bugs in the software on Rigol scopes

[pascal_sweden]

Who on this forum has good contacts with the Rigol product department?

Has it already been suggested to Rigol to use an electronic environment for tracking bugs, with tickets that can be opened and closed? Every ticket has a title, problem category, problem description, and severity of the bug/issue.

There are many electronic systems for tracking bugs, like ClearDDTS, Bugzilla, JIRA, etc.
Some are even freeware. I believe Bugzilla would be more than adequate for this.

BTW: What software version management system is Rigol using in their software department?
Their software version management system could be tightly integrated with Bugzilla, to automatically close a ticket when they check in a bug fix on their software branch, and the issue can be automatically added to the "fixed issues" in the release notes.

Rigol could configure Bugzilla with the proper categories, like the model of the scope, firmware version, the problem category (front-end issue, sampling problem, menu issue, etc.). They could prepare an overview with the categories and have it reviewed by the community, before they start setting up the categories in Bugzilla, so that the categories are properly aligned with the expectations of the expert users/problem reporters.

Rigol could appoint a dedicated person, who is also member on this forum, to manage and maintain the problems in Bugzilla. End users would not be able to report tickets themselves in the system, to avoid that the system gets overloaded, and that the same problem is reported several times under a different ticket number.

However end users should be able to get read access to the system, in order to review the issues that were already reported by the EEVblog community, and that were already processed by the dedicated Bugzilla person appointed by Rigol. This way the end users can follow-up and monitor the status of previously reported bugs.

Even if the issue is already reported in the Bugzilla system, end users can provide additional information and root cause investigations to the dedicated Bugzilla person, who can then add the additional information to the Bugzilla ticket. This way all the information from the end users is always available to the Rigol engineers in China.

Everybody will benefit from this system. Bugs will be reported in a more structured way. The community can help with the troubleshooting by providing additional information such as reproduction steps.  The problem severity can by default, be set to an appropriate level, by the dedicated Bugzilla person. If the community believes that the priority should be raised, it can be requested to the Bugzilla person to change the respective priority. The Rigol engineers in China will get all the necessary information at hand, resulting in the timely closure of blocking/show-stopper issues. The Rigol engineers in China know on what issues they have to focus, based on the reported problem severity.  Issues with lower priority will be fixed on the background (in the long run) as well eventually. Some triggers can be setup in the system, that will send an alarm to the product owners at Rigol, when an issue has been open for too long time. This will prevent that some issues will never get fixed.

[Lightages]

With sales so high do you really think that Rigol is going to participate? Do you really think that they would in any case?

[smgvbest]

I think the better question is why do you think they don't track bugs?  They're not an opensource company so why would they have a public bug tracking site?   My impression is that every company has to weigh the cost to fix a bug against it's severity and determine if the bug is of value to fix.   On a scope like the DS1000Z series they may simply feel the cost to fix something is not worth it unless the bug has major press like the jitter issue.   Other things like new or improved functions are also something any company has to weigh in on especially in the are of how much space is left on FPGA's or others chips like the processors

I would definately like to see rigol produce release notes and make them public so we know what a release is fixing
Since Rigol recommends not upgrading unless your fixing a specific problem then knowing if the update has the problem you want fixed would seem more logical to provide.

Just my humble opinion

For our own use as a better respository of issue's I think it would be great but I doubt rigol would be engaged with it

[pickle9000]

Just as a general statement most Chinese companies tend to "hide" all equipment failures, software bugs and so on.

Hantek is an exception they have a very open "help" forum and it's worth a look. Some of the stuff is scary but I certainly commend them for having an open help forum. Hantek is still very young so the actual gear has a long way to go.

One good thing about the Rigol gear is that the users are vocal. The equipment is being examined very closely, even so I would like to see a list of fixes and such.

 

[tautech]

 
Kwass has already done that job for them and AFAIK she's not even on their payroll. 

Hell, if they really wanted to "connect" with their client base, they would have put up a representitive as a EEVBlog forum member just as Siglent did some time ago.

We all forget about the massive local market in China, don't you think there wouldn't be significant local feedback for them there to consider?

[pascal_sweden]

The community here could actually setup their own Bugzilla system, and there could be one assigned person per specific scope model, to keep things under control.

This would be of great help to the community as such.

The fact that all bugs would be structured, and publicly visible in an organised way, even if it is not under the control and managed by Rigol, would most likely have impact on the way they fix bugs and do software releases, as it would make them more "concerned" about how their product is perceived on the market.

Somebody has to take the initiative. If they don't have a representative on this forum, we make one here ourselves If they don't take the time to setup a Bugzilla bug tracking environment, we setup one here ourselves Freedom to the Rigol users, power to the people

[ebastler]

The community here could actually setup their own Bugzilla system, and there could be one assigned person per specific scope model, to keep things under control.
...
Somebody has to take the initiative. If they don't have a representative on this forum, we make one here ourselves If they don't take the time to setup a Bugzilla bug tracking environment, we setup one here ourselves Freedom to the Rigol users, power to the people

Sounds like you are volunteering?  ;-)

[pascal_sweden]

I can definitely help in setting up the Bugzilla system.

To define the problem categories, we would need expert help from advanced scope users to come up with the proper granularity of problem categories.

To setup the hosting, and configure the back-end, we would need help from a Linux guru

Unfortunately I am quite busy working on a research project just now, so can not dedicate much time for this activity. I was more seeing myself here as an adviser

[ebastler]

Unfortunately I am quite busy working on a research project just now, so can not dedicate much time for this activity. I was more seeing myself here as an adviser

Yeah, I'm afraid the category of people with too much time on their hands, and a lack of ideas how to use it, is under-represented on this forum ;-)

[rdl]

Dream on. Rigol is too busy laughing on their way to the bank. They will spend nothing to fix anything unless it improves their profits.

[pascal_sweden]

Why does everybody here have such a negative attitude about Rigol support?

Maybe the current situation is not good, but that does not mean that it can not be improved.

Rigol is a very ambitious company, and maybe they want to improve the support side as well, in order to further compete with the big guys out there =)

Sometimes companies just need a little push, by setting a formal example.

[H.O]

Rigol is too busy laughing on their way to the bank. They will spend nothing to fix anything unless it improves their profits.

What company will spend resources on anything that they don't think will work towards increased (or atleast sustained) profits?
Keysight? Tektronix? Rohde & Schwartz? Teledyne LeCroy? Keithley? Insert big player here?

[Wuerstchenhund]

Why does everybody here have such a negative attitude about Rigol support?

Maybe because they aren't even doing what they could do already? For example, basic things like offering firmware downloads and revision histories on their website? Or producing some non-shitty utilities for their gear?

As someone who owns a Rigol product (DG1062z) and who has seen other Rigol devices I can't really say that I get the impression that Rigol really cares much about if their support can compete with the 'big guys' (and the difference between them and Rigol is really day and night).

All Rigol cares is to sell as many low cost devices as possible. Just look at their portfolio, which is pretty good in the entry level but absolutely awful in the upper price range. It also shows in how they support their products, i.e. focussing their efforts on their bestsellers (i.e. DS1000z, DS2000) while neglegting their other products. Those bugs that cause the most uproar get fixed, others won't. Keeping costs down to maintain an attractive price level is the most important thing, bugs are secondary unless they directly affect the bottom line.

Which is perfectly legitimate of course, but it shows where their priorities are (and where not). Rigol is in for the money, not to build a community or something like that.

Sometimes companies just need a little push, by setting a formal example.

So I guess you never worked in a corporate environment then?

[pascal_sweden]

I see your point, and understand how Rigol is thinking.
But still believe it is very short sighted, and will affect them in the long run.

It is not surprising though. I have worked in big corporations, including Fortune 500 companies, and to the outer world the product looks very good quality, but in reality it is a different story.

I think it is really sad, that even multinationals are acting like this today.
Back in the eighties and early nineties, people were proud on the products which they engineered, and they wanted to be better than the competition, not only in terms of features, but also in terms of quality and stability. Everything was top-notch engineered.

But these days are long gone. Products look the same as their competitors, and quality is below standard. They can do this because they have a famous name, and it will still sell. People believe that the products should be good, if it comes from such a big brand. But in reality they are not.

I have always tried to be part of an internal committee to improve quality, but stumbled on internal rejection, because it basically undermined the position of some overpaid product managers, who have no clue about loyalty against customers.

Some companies today focus on the features, and they want to have all the latest bells and whistles, even when the basic features are not working as they should and are very unstable.
For me this is complete non-sense, as you should first get your basic features right. If you can't handle that, then there is no point in trying to impress the customers with fancy features.

Doing things better and in a more structured manner is always directly associated with increased cost. This seems to be burned into the people's mind.
But what if you design a product directed to the professional telecom market, and after it turns out that there are major recalls in the field, where you have to manually rework every single unit. If you calculate the price on that, you would be amazed of how high the cost can be, due to penalties in service level agreements with the customer. But of course these numbers will be hidden in reports. I have seen this in a big American Fortune 500 company. I think they have eaten margins to very low levels this way, and even went negative in the balance sheet on that specific product line. Just horrible. And what happened to the responsible product manager? Well, he got promoted. Because he probably was playing golf with management People just don't care anymore, once they have a comfortable position, and a sky high salary. They are not there to make products that make the customer happy. They are just there to collect their monthly earnings. People without a conscience.

This is exactly the reason why big corporations taking up such practises eventually dissolve. There are plenty of examples, and I don't think that I have to mention explicit names

And it's also the reason why small companies can be very successful and actually have a fair chance to compete with the big guys. Because in big corporations processes are slow, and there is no visibility about people paid a lot for doing nothing. In a small company this is not possible.

It's not that the companies don't know that they are not doing the way they should.
What I once heard from a manager was the following answer: "we suck the least".
So basically they didn't want to improve things, because they knew the competition was also sucking in product quality, and relatively speaking they were still doing okey, compared to the competitors, even if that would mean a crappy product for the customers. They are simply not proud anymore. A good company would not care about how bad their competitors do. They should be proud on making top-notch engineered products, and care about how to make their customers happy. Because it is the customer that buys their product in the end of the day. And if they want that the customers keep on buying in the long run, they better fix their products.

Suggest you look at this movie, which summarizes what happens in big companies

[miguelvp]

I think you are making a lot of assumptions and the thing is that you don´t know how Rigol operates, or even how big Rigol is since you refer to it as a large corporation.

And why would any company commit to a public bug tracking system, I'm pretty sure they have their own internal bug tracking, but with limited resources (400 employees according to wikipedia) they are probably busy with the next generation of devices and issues that don't really affect their large costumer base are probably falling as not economically feasible to address.

I know that Tequipment.net has asked them to address issues in the past and they responded rapidly, so if you have any problems then contact your vendor and let them deal with Rigol directly to address whatever issue you have.

Or contact Rigol Europe via their support page:
http://www.rigol.eu/tech-support/

I understand that you think you have a great idea, but I don't see any benefit for a small company ore a large corporation for that matter to have a public driven development cycle because the public doesn't know the operation of the company itself and they would make the company waste resources by committing to the public opinion which at large is very misinformed.

[smgvbest]

@miguelvp   That is what I am saying.   do the BIG test equipment companies have public bugzilla's or private ones?  I wager they have private internal tracking sites were they prioritize bugs.   

We do it where I work and every company I've worked at.   you look at how many users are reporting the bug, cost to fix it. number of users total and other factors to determine if it's money spent on fixing it vs new development is worth it.   back to an old and maybe bad example  I was on the Vista beta team.  we had 6000 bugs reported MS, dismissed them all but a few due to the number of user who might experience the bug and boy did the miss that one.   the point being though any company weighs cost vs value.   something reported is always #1 to the customer.   but if you have a user based of say 10,000 and you have 2-3 reporting a bug are you going to fix it?  probably not.   then it gets to several hundred you start looking,  it hits a 1000 and you say yeh we better fix this one.   

That's my opinion anyways.

FWIW,  I've found Rigol USA very responsive to questions and support.  So personally they've been great.
I would like to see a better release method for fixes and release notes sure I would. 

As far as thier entry into the high end professional market,   any company is going to face the same battle,  unproven equipment is just not going to make it into professional shops.   how any are really going to risk an unproven company.  but until someone does they will never be able to prove themselves and lets face it if any test equipment maker entered the market right now they're going to face the same thing. it's not limited to Rigol.   But on the other hand,   if they we're allow into the market their products would improve greatly because to maintain that market they would have to invest in fixing things quickly which would improve thier image and increase sales.   so it's a chicken and egg thing I think.   to get what we want from Rigol someone has to trust in them enough to let them in the door.   but no ones going to do that so they and any company new to the business is stuck

IMHO

[bitwelder]

If I can add my 2c comment, I'm also positively impressed by the Rigol support.
I emailed a technical question to Rigol EU (as a hobbyist, not as big customer from the corporate account), and I got an answer from their application engineer (in Germany) on Sunday and while he was not in office.

[kwass]

Kwass has already done that job for them and AFAIK she's not even on their payroll. 

I'm not, but I'm open to offers from them

[alsetalokin4017]

This recent bug I've found, IF others are able to reproduce it, may set them back on their heels a bit. This one seems every bit as important, maybe even more so, than the jitter issue. At least one other user has been able to reproduce it. Who would buy a scope that can freeze up totally and require a reboot just because the user selected a simple combination of settings?