[launchpad] temporary subscription to packages

[Matthias Klose]

Summary: Ubuntu developers don't have a strong relation to packages as 
i.e. seen in Debian, however current launchpad doesn't have any means to 
describe such loose relations between a person and a package. Something 
like temporary subscription to a package might be useful for people who 
fix one thing in a package and then go on to the next package/thing to 
fix, otoh it will cost some resources to implement. Polling for 
feedback, if others consider such a feature as beeing useful. Please add 
the feedback as a reply or to the bug report mentioned below.

The feature request is at https://launchpad.net/products/malone/+bug/3882

Launchpad/Malone allows subscribing people and groups of people to a 
package and monitor that package for bug reports, uploads, build status, 
etc. When working on packages that you are not subscribed to, or when 
working on package which belongs to a team, no notification is sent to 
the uploader. It would be useful to get all this information on this 
package for a limited period only (i.e be informed of build failures, 
installability problems, new bug reports regarding your upload, etc). 
This can be done by

- subscribing to the package, then unsubscribing again. this puts the
   burden on the uploader, and is likely to be forgotten.

- have launchpad look at the uploader field and the person who signs
   the upload and subscribe/unsubscribe the person(s) automatically.
   the length of subscription can
   - either be a fixed amount of time
   - some state information (i.e. package built on all archs, package
     installable on all archs, no new bugs for some time, next version
     uploaded by somebody else).

Currently an uploader has to poll this information from different 
sources, which takes some effort and is likely to be forgotten, if the 
number of packages increases.

If something like this is beeing implemented, there are surely more 
things to spec out, i.e.

- Would this be a default setting?
- How would you turn it on/off?
- How would Malone communicate to the bugmail recipient why  they're
   getting bugmail all of a sudden for a package?
- How would Malone communicate when this bugmail will stop?
- Is approaching this kind of complexity in the Malone UI worth the
   benefits that will be gained by users?

Is this worth implementing?

   Matthias, with feedback from Brad