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[Henning Eggers <henning.eggers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is a request for a principal policy decision although I raise it based on
a specific case.

I just submitted a fix for bug 638920[1] which deals with the situation where
a public project has its code in a private branch. Trying to display a link to
that private branch will cause an "Unauthorized" exception. When deciding how
to deal with this on the translations page for a project series I realized
that the overview page was already dealing with it by pretending that no code
branch has been set at all. "No revision control details recorded for ...
series." So I felt I had to do the same on the translations page in order not
to give away more information than was intended.

Is it a conscious policy decision to treat private data like non-existent
data? If not, what should the policy be? What do we gain by hiding the fact
that private data exists? What risks are we taking with a statement like "The
code for this series is held in a private branch." or "You have no access to
the code for this series." ?

Same goes for private bugs and private ... What else do we have that may be
private?

Henning

[1] https://launchpad.net/bugs/638920