Raymond writes about getting stuck with a bug because he had once re-assigned the bug to another developer (the tar-baby approach to bug assignment). He suggests that perhaps the solution is an alter ego that he can use for such cases, but then asks, “What should I do if somebody asks the alter ego to investigate the bug?”
Back at Apple, when I used to help run the bug reviews for QuickTime, we used a fake account for just that reason. The name on the fake account? Andy Warhol, so named because QuickTime 1.0 was codenamed Warhol.
All this meant was that every few months, one of us would get an angry phone call or email from soneone at Apple demanding to be put in touch with Andy, who they couldn’t find anywhere in the Apple address book.
Posted by Mike at April 27, 2006 09:31 PM