Users are subscribed to bugs without consent

[Enrico Zini]

Context: I am a Debian developer but not an Ubuntu developer. I do have a launchpad account that I only use for occasionally reporting a bug in Ubuntu and following up on those if/when needed. I lack the time for closely following the Ubuntu side of the software I am upstream for, and luckily there are good people in Ubuntu who take care of that.

Today I suddenly got subscribed to a bug (655831) without any consent on my part, and that has caused me annoyance. While discussing the situation on #ubuntu-devel, I was made aware that it is a common practice in the Ubuntu ecosystem.

Although I have a Launchpad account, I do not consider myself an active part of the Ubuntu ecosystem, and I consider such a practice to be abuse in case I am on the receiving end. If having a launchpad account means that I need to accept a practice that I consider abuse, then the reasonable thing for me to do is to disable my launchpad account. That would be a shame.

I reckon the current system works well for active Ubuntu developers, and fails miserably for people who are not. That is fair enough, since we are looking at two completely different use cases.

Without needing to deactivate the launchpad account, things could be solved with a checkbox in my account preferences that says "do not allow other people to subscribe me to bugs", or, if you want a more general option, "I am not an active Ubuntu developer".

That would allow me to pick which of the two use cases I fit in, and would mean that my account could still be useful to me and the Ubuntu community without giving the wrong illusion to people about my involvement, and without generating unwanted noise on my side.

Best regards,
Enrico

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

This relates to bug 58410 and bug 239909.

[Robert Collins (lifeless)]

looks like a dup of bug 58410 to me, no? As in, how would we solve this without also solving that (if that bug were rephrased as symptom focused)

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

I also considered making this bug a dupe of bug 58410 since both bugs share the same concern, but I thought we had a separate bug tracking the desire that subscribee should get a notification to accept the subscription. I cannot find such as bug after two attempts. Maybe we retitle the other bug to use this bug's title.