As I noted in my January 9th Simulator User Group notes, Linden Lab is in the process of moving Second Life away from using Atlassian’s Jira for bug reporting / tracking and filing feature requests, and on January 12th, this was confirmed in the first of a series of official blog posts on the transition.
The decision to move away from Jira is due to Atlassian changing their licensing model; traditionally, Linden Lab has been able to offer Jira on an unlimited basis to all SL users, leveraging the Atlassian Jira Server licence. That licence is being discontinued by Atlassian, making it fiscally impossible for Linden Lab to pay the licence fees associated with its many thousands of individual users who regularly access Jira. Therefore, a move to an alternate platform or platforms is required.
This being the case, going forward Jira will be replaced by what has been called a two-pronged approach to issue reporting and feature requests:
- Github will form the new back-end for tracking and managing issues and requests (and is already being used for this purpose by LL), with all current Jira issues being migrated to it. In addition, technical users (such as TPV viewer developers, open-source contributors, etc.) who have accounts with Github, will be able to file ticket through it as well.
- More generally, a new front-end feedback portal has been created for filing bug reports and feature requests by users at large.
The latter is powered by Canny customer feedback software and tools. It was selected for a number of reasons, as the Lab note in their official blog post, not the least of which is the fact that Canny offers integration with Github, allowing requests and issues raised within it to be imported into the Github repositories (removing the need for cloning issues as is currently the case with Jira), combined with an improved set of triage tools. Other advantages with Canny are given as:
- The ability to log-into the Canny tracking system via a user’s Second Life log-in credentials (as is the case with Jira now), thus maintaining its convenience of access / use.
- Simpler forms for bug reports and feature requests, which may encourage more users to file issues / ideas.
- Clearer navigation for non-technical users, making finding issues, etc., easier.
- The use of multiple Boards to help categorise submissions and information.
- The ability to view a roadmap of activities and priorities.
- Other advantages as noted by the Lab can be found in the official blog post.
The system has been undergoing testing, which has involved selected users, and feedback on it has been provided – although not all of it is particularly favourable. Some of the issued raised (such as the lack of file format options for attachments with only jpg, png, gif and webp supported) are understandable, particularly given these are unlikely to change in the near-future (if at all); others might simply be the result of a natural reluctance to enforced change. In this respect, the Lab is at pains to note that Canny is not a one-to-one replacement for Jira, and will require changes to established behaviours; how people adapt to this in practice is only something time will demonstrate.
The switch-over to Canny / Github will now be rapid (by SL standards). The new Jira licensing is due to come into force in March 2024, and so the Lab has published the following timeframe for the transition away from it:
- December 2023: generate a full archive of Jira and maintain until shutdown.
- December 2023 / January 2024: migrate Jira reports to Github repositories. Soft launch of Canny and accept tickets via both Canny and Jira.
- February 2024: provide information on accessing the Jira archive; shutdown Jira access and complete switch to Canny / Github.
Finally, as noted in the official blog post – these changes do not impact general Support / personal issues. These should still be reported to support.secondlife.com.
For my part, I have previously – with the Lab’s help – provided tutorials on filing both bug reports and feature requests. The not As the Canny front-end for filing either is considerably more straight-froward to use (and / or may be further enhanced based on user feedback), I will a) be disabling access to the Jira tutorials on this blog from mid-February; b) may provide a tutorial on using Canny, if this is found to be worthwhile.
Related Links
- Moving From Jira, Pt. 1 – Linden Lab official blog post
- Second Life Feedback Portal
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