launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Jonathan Lange <jml@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello all,

We've been looking at automating creation of private PPAs for the
Software Centre, as part of our ongoing automatic packaging
initiative[1].

We've discovered that the "commercial" flag on IArchive was added for
the use in selling applications for the Software Center but is
_almost_ no longer needed.

As far as we can tell, the only thing it gets us is that it prevents
PPA subscription emails from being sent to users who purchase things
through the Software Center.

We think that removing 'commercial' would make Launchpad simpler and
reduce its maintenance costs. However, we would want to still be able
to subscribe people without sending them emails. It's on this that we
want your input.

Here are some options that we thought of:

 * add a boolean parameter to the subscription that controls whether
emails are sent
 * don't send subscription emails when the request came from the API
 * don't send subscription emails at all

Are any of these preferable? Are there better options?

Thanks,
jml

[1] wiki.ubuntu.com/AutomagicBinaryPackaging/ImplementationPlan