should people.ubuntu.com be people.canonical.com

[Jordan Mantha]

So one of my pet peeves in the community since I first started has
been that people.ubuntu.com accounts are only for Canonical employees
(as far as I'm aware). Since a large majority of Ubuntu developers are
volunteers and not Canonical employees it seems quite odd and
exclusionary to have a URL like people.ubuntu.com only for the
employees.

I would like to suggest that one of two things be done with this situation:

  1. allow all developers (or maybe even members) to have access to
people.ubuntu.com . I feel this would justify the URL, i.e. the people
that make Ubuntu

  2. Move people.ubuntu.com to people.canonical.com to free the
people.ubuntu.com URL for community focused usage. This would, IMO,
more accurately represent reality than the current usage.

I personally favor option 1, for reasons explained below.

My reasons for bringing this up are not to cause a big stir in the
community. Indeed this is why I've never mentioned it before. I
believe this issue is important for two main reasons.

Firstly, the URL, to me and many people I think, says "these are the
people that develop Ubuntu". So if only Canonical employees have
access then that's just not true and in facts accentuates the idea
that Canonical employees are treated differently within the community
purely because of their employment. So I think from a community
standpoint it's an issue. I really believe that people.ubuntu.com
should belong to the Ubuntu community. If the community developers can
be trusted with the archives surely they can be trusted with
people.ubuntu.com?

Secondly, I think we would increase collaboration and development
tools if the community developers were allowed to have access to
people.ubuntu.com. The Canonical devs already use that space quite
extensively (making moving it definitely non-ideal). The MOTU have
lost their machine (tiber) in the compromise and for some time scripts
have been hosted in various places. Launchpad can certainly be used
for hosting bzr and packages now, but things like task lists, bug
reports, and helpful scripts/tools don't have a place on Launchpad.

Anyway, I'm really trying to not "rock the boat", I realize there are
technical issues with giving more people access to machines. I just
think it's something worth considering.

-Jordan