DoctorMo's Blog

Do you have a launchpad account? How easy was it to get? Have you used ground control and effectively tied your desktop development more effectively to your launchpad account and the branches and bugs therein?

I find the process a little difficult when it comes to ssh keys, and maybe the openid stuff could be made prettier. But over all it’s a very inclusive process that wants as many users as possible, doing as many things as possible.

Compare this to FreeDesktop.org: Process for FreeDesktop.org Registration

Holy Cow! You have to make a bug report to ask for an account, attach your public ssh and gpg keys (make sure the gpg key is visible from a specific server.) and then wait for a real person to process it. Made worse is the gratuitous use of BugZilla, which design wise is a candidate for what _not_ to do when making a complex user interface. I can’t imagine many people going through these hurdles in order to get involved with development, I certainly can’t imagine writing a front end desktop interface for it.

No wonder projects spring up on launchpad, with all it’s faults. It’s better than most other development services by virtue of having processes designed and some thought put into how to make sure it’s as simple on the outside, but still complex on the inside as possible.