if it's not your dist, I don't believe RT will let you close tickets

Ok ... I'll soon find out for certain about that. (It's not my dist - I merely have maintainership permissions.)

Update: Just as an fyi - I *can* close these tickets, despite not being the owner of the dist. (At least I've just managed to close one of 'em ... still got a few to go :-)

The idea of the Owner is that you assign work to people on the "team" working on the dist

I see ... the "Owner" is the person to whom the ticket has been assigned, not the "Owner" of the dist.

Thanks for the answers, f00li5h.

Cheers,
Rob