Comment 7 for bug 210908

Francis: that would probably be okay. Until we've got an appropriate UI, I'd prefer not to expose too much data about users.

Lucien: We semi-regularly get requests from people who want to use a nickname that is currently used by an inactive user (maybe someone who created an account purely to order shipit CDs or use shop.canonical.com). I doubt this is likely to decrease, and there is value in letting active Launchpad users have recognisable nicknames.

Having immutable identities is important for a number of things we're doing with OpenID single signon, which made the random identifiers the best solution.