There is a fairly intelligible difference between "keeping a list of bugs that need to be fixed never works let's just remember it in our heads" and "bug databases often get misused and the result is they fill up with junk".
The downsides noted in that quote are definitely valid, and I've worked in companies / projects where that happens, but I don't think that completely invalidates them as a concept.
A bug tracker is not a TODO list. I work on Hadoop, and there are bugs that have been open for 6 years now, and probably will be open for 6 more. Bug trackers can help you compose a TODO list (sometimes called a roadmap, in a corporate context), but they are not themselves TODO lists.
There is a fairly intelligible difference between "keeping a list of bugs that need to be fixed never works let's just remember it in our heads" and "bug databases often get misused and the result is they fill up with junk".
The downsides noted in that quote are definitely valid, and I've worked in companies / projects where that happens, but I don't think that completely invalidates them as a concept.