This page describes some of the underlying core principles that we use to develop Bugzilla.

The Purpose of Bugzilla

The purpose of Bugzilla is:

To help people store and organize bug reports.

Without limiting the above statement, here are some examples of what we mean by "storing and organizing":

Storing includes filing, viewing, and editing bugs.
"Organizing" generally means "putting order into a large number of bug reports". It includes:
- Having a system of organization for bugs that allows them to be located. In Bugzilla, this is mostly accomplished by the various bug fields. (This is the purpose of bug fields.)
- Having a search system that allows finding what you're looking for (or being told that it's not in the system, if it's not in the system).
- The ability to sort lists of bugs according to the user's needs, such as "what order should these bugs be fixed in?"

Our General Principles

It is more important to make Bugzilla helpful to experienced users than it is to make it simple. (However, simplicity should still be a goal whenever it doesn't interfere with being helpful to experienced users.)
Discourage the filing of unfixable bug reports, without discouraging the filing of fixable bug reports.
Bugzilla is a bug-tracker, not a Project Management system.
Bugs should be very fast to edit for people who edit bugs. We mean fast in terms of the total time the user spends editing them, not just in terms of the system's performance.
Searching should be powerful, flexible, and fast.
Comments are an immutable historical record of what was said on a bug.