Reserved project names and cooperative transfer of ownership

[Bret A. Barker]

On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 10:46:53PM -0400, Michael Hall wrote:
> On 03/25/2017 06:53 AM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> > ... yes, more questions :-)
> > 
> > First, how problematic is it to organize a cooperative transfer of
> > ownership of a reserved name between one snap publisher and another? 
> > I'm thinking of a case where a package might start as a 3rd-party
> > project (read: yours truly) and then be made official later.
> > 
> > I know the recommended practice is to define a different name, like
> > `appname-whatever`, but I'm wondering what the options and difficulties
> > might be if that wasn't wanted.
> > 
> 
> IIRC, it's a manual process still, so it's not really problematic but it
> won't scale well if it becomes a very common occurrence. For now though,
> as long as you have the original developer's blessing to use the package
> name, you should be good to go ahead. We will hopefully have a more
> scalable solution in place before it becomes a burden on us.
>

This work is well underway and will make it painless for the existing publisher of a snap to transfer it over to another developer. We will announce the details here when it is ready.

Meanwhile, if you are just testing things out we recommend using appname-username pattern, or if you intend to steward the snap and commit to regular quality releases then you can request ownership of the base appname via the name registration process.

-bret