Well, it seems likely that the HTTP_PROXY is there to help in downloading the search for bugs against the package, and not to submit the bug.  Whether or not the proxy is defined, it cannot communicate with Devuan BTS.

[ Question: does it really mean Devuan BTS, or Debian BTS? ]

Okay, get past that.  I want to continue.

So, I can compile a bug report after all.  Do my typing practice, and try to submit.  So here we are, some random site on the Internet trying to connect to the SMTP port at bugs.devuan.org, and we get 550 - relay not permitted.

Which is kind of what I thought would happen.

I now have a file sitting in /tmp on a machine not configured to send email.  And if I reboot the computer, I probably find that file has disappeared (cleanup in boot process).  So, if I want to submit the report, I need to transfer that file to a machine which is configured to send email.  (Properly.) 

Earlier today, I happened across a transcript of an "IRC chat" (?) between a few people at Debian, back in 2010 I believe.  About problems with reportbug.  I didn't read the entire transcript, but by and large the problems listed are still problems today.  And things like the man pages being opaque to novice users  is part of this.  The transcript sort of had a target of setting up a web based bug submission process.

Let's say we have a PC with a new install of Devuan on it, and reportbug is configured to send reports somewhere.  If it cannot send SMTP (because it is some random site on the Internet, and not a real MTA or SMTP that the receiving site can trust), is there some way to still submit the report?

In my situation, I have an account here at Devuan (I was registered in a now defunct mailing list at one time as well).  What if we have a daemon on the devuan.org side, which can accept bug reports?  Reportbug on our end connects to the daemon, and sends a user string that is registered at Devuan.  The user string and password are concatenated, and used to encrypt the message from reportbug.  (At the moment, I don't happen to have my password, I let the darned web browser memorize it.  But there is a mechanism in place for me to relearn my password, possibly by resetting it.)  If the daemon looks up the password on its end (or something like that) and the beginning of the decoded message starts with:

Devuan Bug Report Submission

then perhaps it could be treated as a bug submission?

Maybe the daemon generates a 2048 bit random key, and sends it back in the handshake once that decode is finished.  The reportbug on my end would then use this 2048 bit key to encrypt further bug reports made by this process.

But, I haven't spent my life thinking about the whys and wherefores of security, so this might not be sufficient.

This is an install of Devuan/Jessie from the DVD, that was upgraded to Ascii.  All the old Debian/Jessie /home have not been moved yet, the only account really is "root".

Reportbug had not been configured (obviously).  Tried the generic dpkg-reconfigure -plow, which did nothing, so I read the man page.  I then ran reportbug --configure

It plays 20 questions with me (fewer than 20 in this instance).  It sort of suggests that if I don't have an already established way to send email, that it will make use of a Debian SMTP to do so.  I then try to send a bug report on slim.  Reportbug complains about NoNetwork.  Hmm, I thought the network is up.  Apt-get update works.  querybts slim retrieves all the bugs listed against slim at Debian.org.  So I am guessing that NoNetwork means that the configuration of reportbug has not listed a SMTP to use in sending the report.  Which means how I interpretted the lack of an SMTP on this machine is wrong.

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I have 3 "desktop" machines, a router (OpenWRT), a "modem" (Ubiquity PTP) and 1 "server"  on the LAN at the moment, in the not too distant future there will be 2 or 3 RPi type things as well.  The server does have a configured exim (and claws) which can send email via a SMTP on the Internet.  (Or, I think exim is configured to do so, may not be tested adequately.)  All of the other desktop computers on the LAN at the moment are Debian, and if this is to be Devuan specific there would be a problem anyway.

But, it would be nice if I have to provide the path to send email to the bug system (is it at Debian, or at Devuan?), that it could be sent via my "server".

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In the spirit of that sending bugs for a LAN by a LAN server comment, having a "server" has other contexts.

For example, I like to run gkrellm.  This program can query an external site for the weather.  If I have 4 desktops all with gkrellm querying the weather every 10 minutes, that is on average 4 queries every 10 minutes.  Really, the server should be the one doing the query to the external site.