canonical-isd-hackers team mailing list archive

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Jonathan Lange wrote on 29/09/10 11:39:
>
> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 5:45 AM, William Grant <me@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, 2010-09-24 at 00:38 -0400, Elliot Murphy wrote:
>...
>>> This might be a dumb question, but why is it a problem if non-Ubuntu
>>> LP users see an Ubuntu-branded SSO site?
>>
>> Many projects are concerned that Launchpad is too tied to Ubuntu.
>> Forcing them through an Ubuntu authentication gateway will probably
>> not help with that.
> 
> I don't disagree with you, but I haven't heard anything from these
> projects. I'd like to know more about their concerns, do you have
> anything that could help me follow this up?

It's an issue I first grappled with when designing the Launchpad Login
Service in April 2006, though it wasn't implemented until a couple of
years later (and it turned out quite a bit uglier than I wanted;-). This
is from a wiki page I wrote in April 2008:

    For Launchpad, we want to avoid using the word “Ubuntu” — or
    even “Canonical” — in the branding of the login service. This is
    because we want maximum adoption by upstream projects (and
    eventually by distributions other than Ubuntu), and any
    implication that Launchpad is Ubuntu-specific would be
    unhelpful.

    For all the other cases, using the word “Ubuntu” makes sense
    (though for [Ubuntu One], we need to avoid confusion with
    people’s local Ubuntu user accounts). And for several of the
    services — particularly [Ubuntu One] and the Canonical Store —
    using the word “Launchpad” would be a distracting non-sequitur.

    So, in summary:
    *   we need a login service that has only one name and
        appearance;
    *   if [Ubuntu One] uses it, that name should include “Ubuntu”;
    *   if Launchpad uses it, the name shouldn’t include “Ubuntu”.

    Therefore, [Ubuntu One] and Launchpad should not use the same
    login service.

I did not have in mind the possibility that we ended up with, which is
two separately branded interfaces, but subtle notes on each explaining
that you can use an account from the other. I think this is a good
solution (though we're still missing the subtle note on
login.launchpad.net that you can use your Ubuntu SSO account).

Now, apart from what Monty just posted, I've never had hard evidence
that it *would* be unhelpful or discomforting to use Ubuntu branding.
And it would be hard to ever collect that evidence. It would be just an
impression in the minds of individual upstream developers that "oh,
Launchpad's just an Ubuntu thing".

(For the same reason, I think it's probably a bad idea for Launchpad's
interface to use the Ubuntu font.)

- -- 
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/
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