Launchpad should have a "declined" bug state

[to be removed]

When reviewing old bugs filed against Ubuntu, of which there are plenty, every so often I find a bug that is valid, which existed at the time it was filed, but is now obsolete. For example, there were problems in the upgrade from breezy to dapper, which were quite real. Those bug did not affect any later upgrades. If someone were to upgrade from breezy to dapper today, they'd still get the bug. However, since breezy is way past the point where it got any support, the bug is obsolete.

This is quite distinct from the bug being invalid. Thus, from a bug classification point of view, it is wrong to mark it invalid, but that is currently the best state Launchpad offers.

Marking it invalid is also bad for morale: since it was (and is) a valid bug, telling the bug reporter that it was an invalid bug gives the impression the reporter did something wrong, and should have done something different. However, in reality, Ubuntu did something wrong, by not fixing it back then.

Thus, I think a bug state called "obsolete" is called for.

Alternatively, "invalid" could be renamed to something less condescending towards the bug reporter. Perhaps someone could suggest a word for "while we don't want to go into the reason why, this bug is no longer interesting to keep open, since keeping it open will not help anyone, including the bug reporter, but especially the developers, whose bug lists are long enough as it is"?

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

How about renaming "Invalid" to "Declined"? That would make it gentler, and would reasonably cover the case of not fixing bugs because they're in an unmaintained version. That could be a straight renaming, or it could be the name for a merger of "Invalid" and "Won't Fix" (since "Won't Fix" already seems to be used almost entirely as a gentler synonym of "Invalid").

[to be removed (liw)]

Ooh, I like "declined"!

I don't particularly like "won't fix", even if it is gentler than "invalid".