Bug 458922

Bugzilla is not a support tool

The Bugzilla interface at bugzilla.redhat.com is used internally by Red Hat to
process changes e.g. to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and related products, as well
as by the Fedora Community to develop the Fedora Project.

It is publicly available and everyone with an email address is able to create
an account, file bugs, comment on bugs she or he has access to. Not all bugs
are public though and not all issues filed are handled in the same way: it
makes a huge difference who is behind a bug.
Red Hat does monitor Bugzilla entries, and it does review them for inclusion in
errata, etc.

Nevertheless, as noted on the login page, Bugzilla is not a Support tool. It is
an Engineering tool. It is used by Red Hat Engineering to track issues and
product changes, as well as to interact with Egineering partners and other
parties external to Red Hat on a technical level.

So while all changes to Red Hat Enterprise Linux will at a point go through
Bugzilla, this difference has a number of important consequences for general
product issues filed directly through Bugzilla by external users without any
privileged Engineering relationship:

    *  Red Hat does NOT guarantee any response time or Service Level Agreement
(SLA) for Bugzilla entries. - A review might happen immediately or after a time
span of any length. The SLAs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux provided by Red Hat
Support can be found at: https://www.redhat.com/support/policy/sla/production/
    * Not all comments are publicly visible. - Red Hat Support provides
customers with appropriate information excerpts and status updates from that.
Red Hat does not commit to provide detailed explanations, or guidance in the
context of Bugzilla. Therefore for example, Bugzilla entries might be closed as
it seems without any further explanation, while Red Hat Support actually
provides such explanation to customers filing through the regular support
channels.
    * Issues coming through the regular support process, will always be
prioritized higher than issues of similar impact and severity that are being
filed directly through Bugzilla (unless the later get linked to customer
support tickets, like this issue was). This means that they are more likely to
be addressed and they are more likely to meet inclusion criteria consistent
with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux life cycle policy:
http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/errata/
    * Work-arounds and Hotfixes if possible and appropriate are provided by Red
Hat Support and through the regular support process. - This means that
evenbefore a permanent fix is made available through RHN,customers who raised a
high severity issue through Red Hat Support, are likely to receive an interim
solution.

Red Hat provides common Bugzilla access in order provide efficient development
community interaction and as much transparency as possible to our customers.
Our Engineers are encouraged to provide non-customer specific and
non-confidential information publicly as often as possible.

So while Red Hat considers issues directly entered into Bugzilla valuable
feedback - may it be as comments to existing Bugzilla entries or by opening a
new one; for customers encountering production issues, Bugzilla is not the
right channel.

Therefore we ask our customers to file requests important for their production
systems via our Support service. Only for those issues, we can ensure a
consistent communication. Information about our production support process can
be found at: http://www.redhat.com/support/process/