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<chapter id="about">
<title>About This Guide</title>

  <section id="aboutthisguide">
    <title>Purpose and Scope of this Guide</title>
    <para>
      Bugzilla is simply the best piece of bug-tracking software the
      world has ever seen.  This document is intended to be the
      comprehensive guide to  the installation, administration,
      maintenance, and use of the Bugzilla bug-tracking system.
    </para>
    <para>
      This release of the Bugzilla Guide is the
      <emphasis>&bzg-ver;</emphasis> release. It is so named that it
      may match the current version of Bugzilla. The numbering
      tradition stems from that used for many free software projects,
      in which <emphasis>even-numbered</emphasis> point releases (1.2,
      1.14, etc.) are considered "stable releases", intended for
      public consumption; on the other  hand,
      <emphasis>odd-numbered</emphasis> point releases (1.3, 2.09,
      etc.) are considered unstable <emphasis>development</emphasis>
      releases intended for advanced users, systems administrators,
      developers, and those who enjoy a lot of pain. 
    </para>
    <para>
      Newer revisions of the Bugzilla Guide follow the numbering
      conventions of the main-tree Bugzilla releases, available at
      <ulink url="&bz;">&bz;</ulink>.  Intermediate releases will have
      a minor revision number following a period.  The current version
      of Bugzilla, as of this writing (&bzg-date;) is &bz-ver;; if
      something were seriously wrong with that edition of the Guide,
      subsequent releases would receive an additional dotted-decimal
      digit to indicate the update (&bzg-ver;.1, &bzg-ver;.2, etc.).
      Got it?  Good.
    </para>
  </section>

  <section id="copyright">
    <title>Copyright Information</title>
    <blockquote>
      <attribution>Copyright (c) 2000-2002 Matthew P. Barnson and &bzg-auth;</attribution>
      <para>
	Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
	document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation
	License, Version 1.1 or any later version published  by the
	Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no
	Front-Cover Texts, and  with no Back-Cover Texts.  A copy of
	the license is included in the section entitled  "GNU Free
	Documentation License".
      </para>
    </blockquote>
    <para>
      If you have any questions regarding this document, its
      copyright, or publishing this document in non-electronic form,
      please contact &bzg-auth;. 
    </para>
  </section>

  <section id="disclaimer">
    <title>Disclaimer</title>
    <para>
      No liability for the contents of this document can be accepted.
      Use the concepts, examples, and other content at your own risk.
      As this is a new edition of this document, there may be errors
      and inaccuracies that may damage your system.  Use of this
      document may cause your girlfriend to leave you, your cats to
      pee on your furniture and clothing, your computer to cease
      functioning, your boss to fire you, and global thermonuclear
      war.  Proceed with caution.
    </para>
    <para>
      All copyrights are held by their respective owners, unless
      specifically noted otherwise.  Use of a term in this document
      should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any
      trademark or service mark.
    </para>
    <para>
      Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as
      endorsements, with the exception of the term "GNU/Linux".  We
      wholeheartedly endorse the use of GNU/Linux in every situation
      where it is appropriate.  It is an extremely versatile, stable,
      and robust operating system that offers an ideal operating
      environment for Bugzilla.
    </para>
    <para>
      You are strongly recommended to make a backup of your system
      before installing Bugzilla and at regular intervals thereafter.
      If you implement any suggestion in this Guide, implement this one!
    </para>
    <para>
      Although the Bugzilla development team has taken great care to
      ensure that all easily-exploitable bugs or options are
      documented or fixed in the code, security holes surely exist.
      Great care should be taken both in the installation and usage of
      this software. Carefully consider the implications of installing
      other network services with Bugzilla.  The Bugzilla development
      team members, Netscape Communications, America Online Inc., and
      any affiliated developers or sponsors assume no liability for
      your use of this product.  You have the source code to this
      product, and are responsible for auditing it yourself to insure
      your security needs are met.
    </para>
  </section>

<!-- Section 2: New Versions -->

  <section id="newversions">
    <title>New Versions</title>
    <para>
      This is the &bzg-ver; version of The Bugzilla Guide.  If you are
      reading this from any source other than those below, please
      check one of these mirrors to make sure you are reading an
      up-to-date version of the Guide.
    </para>
    <para>
      This document can be found in the following places:
    </para>
    <para>
      <itemizedlist>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    <ulink url="http://www.bugzilla.org/">bugzilla.org</ulink>
	  </para>
	</listitem>
	<listitem>
	  <para>
	    <ulink url="http://www.linuxdoc.org/">The Linux
	      Documentation Project</ulink>
	  </para>
	</listitem>
      </itemizedlist>
    </para>
    <para>
      The latest version of this document can be checked out via CVS.
	Please follow the instructions available at <ulink
							   url="http://www.mozilla.org/cvs.html">the Mozilla CVS page</ulink>, and check out the <filename>mozilla/webtools/bugzilla/docs/</filename> branch.
    </para>
  </section>

  <section id="credits">
    <title>Credits</title>
    <para>
      The people listed below have made enormous contributions to the
      creation of this Guide, through their dedicated hacking efforts,
      numerous e-mail and IRC support sessions, and overall excellent
      contribution to the Bugzilla community:
    </para>
    <para>
      <ulink url="mailto://mbarnson@sisna.com">Matthew P. Barnson</ulink>
      for pulling together the Bugzilla Guide and shepherding it to 2.14.
    </para>
    <para>
      <ulink url="mailto://terry@mozilla.org">Terry Weissman</ulink>
      for initially writing Bugzilla and creating the
      README upon which the UNIX installation documentation is largely based.
    </para>
    <para>
      <ulink url="mailto://tara@tequilarista.org">Tara
	Hernandez</ulink>  for keeping Bugzilla development going
      strong after Terry left Mozilla.org
    </para>
    <para>
      <ulink url="mailto://dkl@redhat.com">Dave Lawrence</ulink> for
      providing insight into the key differences between Red Hat's
      customized Bugzilla, and being largely responsible for the "Red
      Hat Bugzilla" appendix
    </para>
    <para>
      <ulink url="mailto://endico@mozilla.org">Dawn Endico</ulink> for
      being a hacker extraordinaire and putting up with my incessant
      questions and arguments on irc.mozilla.org in #mozwebtools
    </para>
    <para>
      Last but not least, all the members of the <ulink
							url="news://news.mozilla.org/netscape/public/mozilla/webtools"> netscape.public.mozilla.webtools</ulink> newsgroup.  Without your discussions, insight, suggestions, and patches, this could never have happened.
    </para>
    <para>
      Thanks also go to the following people for significant contributions 
      to this documentation (in no particular order):
    </para>
    <para>
      Zach Liption, Andrew Pearson, Spencer Smith, Eric Hanson, Kevin Brannen,
      Ron Teitelbaum, Jacob Steenhagen, Joe Robins.
    </para>
  </section>

  <section id="translations">
    <title>Translations</title>
    <para>
      The Bugzilla Guide needs translators! Please volunteer your
      translation into the language of your choice. If you will
      translate this Guide, please notify the members of the
      mozilla-webtools mailing list at
      <email>mozilla-webtools@mozilla.org</email>, and arrange with
      &bzg-auth; to check it into CVS.
    </para>
  </section>

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