Project ID ("name") isn't changeable by its maintainer

Bug #104422 reported by Matthew Paul Thomas
6
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Launchpad itself
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

When someone registers a project, they can specify a project ID (which Launchpad calls "Name"), which is used in URLs etc.

If they later rename the project (for example, to avoid a trademark problem), they cannot change this project ID. For example, Ryan Kavanagh wanted to rename "kcypher" to "kcipher", but couldn't. It used to be possible on the +edit page, but that page no longer contains the relevant field.

(If the concern is with breaking URLs, the "Name" field is still changeable for a person's own profile, so this seems a bit inconsistent.)

description: updated
Revision history for this message
Diogo Matsubara (matsubara) wrote :

Matthew,
the rationale for letting only admins to change project name is given in:

zcml/product.zcml

Cheers.

Revision history for this message
Diogo Matsubara (matsubara) wrote :

Rejecting after chatting with the sab.

Here's his rationale:
sabdfl 2006-04-10 I put "name" in the admin group because
             with Bazaar now in place, lots of people can have personal
             data published at product name-based locations (personal
             branches) and these URL's will all be b0rked if the product
             name has to change. It should require RegistryAdmin
             intervention to rename a product now.

Changed in launchpad:
status: Unconfirmed → Rejected
Revision history for this message
David Allouche (ddaa) wrote :

FWIW, I think Matthew is right, and sabdfl has the balance wrong here. It's preventing users from performing a reasonable action to prevent lossage for other users. Practically, projects with large launchpad usage are only very rarely renamed, but small projects or projects still setting themselves up on launchpad tend to do this sort of adjustment quite often.

This is fixing a theoretical problem that we have never observed in practice (projects with signicant launchpad usage frivolously changing names) and making it very difficult to perform an action that is often done (small projects adjusting their registration).

Revision history for this message
Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt) wrote :

And requiring admin intervention doesn't solve the URL breakage problem anyway. For example, launchpad.net/gaim would still need renaming to launchpad.net/pidgin regardless of whether there were 2, 10, 50, or 500 branches of it registered in Launchpad.

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