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On the CC meeting of July 7, 2005, lilo (administrator of the Freenode network) suggested that Ubuntu could be registered as a group on that network.

This specification is meant to cover all info needed to make a final decision on this subject.

Created by DennisKaarsemaker (Seveas)

What is registration

Freenode offers groups of people that use the channel an option to register. According to the Freenode group registration page, this means an official relationship between the group and Freenode will be established. A contact person (or multiple contact persons) are responsible for communication between the group and Freenode.

Benefits

The benefits of being registered as a group are twofold:

• Registration as a group gives the Ubuntu CC and staff control over all channels that are related. This means that rogue channels are impossible and that we can help channel owners in case of problems.
• Members of the Ubuntu group can get hostname cloaks like 'ubuntu/member/active'. This is not just nice for a person's w00t value, but also shows affiliation with Ubuntu.

Costs

There are no financial costs involved. The only requirement that Freenode has is that each group has one or more contact persons, to which all matters regarding the group are directed. This contact person is also the point of contact to the Freenode staff for the group members.

Added manual work

The current status of the registration process is that the group contact(s) must contact a Freenode staff member for changes in channel ownership and channel access lists. The list of nicknames eligible for cloaking also has to be maintained manually until Registry (a new Freenode project) replaces services (Nickserv, Chanserv). This means that the contact person(s) will have quite a bit of work.

Proposal

Registering as a group is a nice way for members and developers to show affiliation. It also provides possibilities to help channel owners with problems. The amount of manual work however may be too much to just delegate to an already very busy Ubuntu developer or Canonical employee. If this is the case I would like to volunteer to do this manual work, because I like the idea of being registered as a group very much.

I would like to propose not to interfere with channel ownership/access lists unless explicitly requested by the owner of the channel or in case of problems.

Hostname cloaks are not obligatory, my proposal here is that people who want one, apply for a hostname cloak by contacting the group contact. Hostname cloaks will have the form $registered_nickname.$affiliation.ubuntu I propose (at least) the following affiliations: member, developer, staff for resp. community members, Ubuntu developers and Canonical/Ubuntu staff.

Status

Cloaks are now offered to Ubuntu members. For more information, see IrcTeam/Cloaks