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Launchpad

URL	launchpad.net
Commercial?	No
Type of site	Project Management
Registration	optional
Available language(s)	English
Owner	Canonical Ltd.
Created by	Canonical Ltd.
Launched	January 2004
Alexa rank	17,981[1]
Current status	Active

Launchpad Suite

Developer(s)	Launchpad Developers
Stable release	3.0 / 2009-09-23
Preview release	3.1.10
Written in	Python
Available in	English
Type	Project Hosting Server
License	Affero General Public License
Website	https://launchpad.net/launchpad-project

Mark Shuttleworth with other Canonical Ltd employees. Discussing Launchpad at a design sprint in Germany.

Launchpad is a web application and web site supporting software development, particularly that of free software. Launchpad is developed and maintained by Canonical Ltd. On 21 July 2009, the source code was released publicly under the GNU Affero General Public License.^[2] As of August 2009^[update], the launchpad repository hosts more than 13,000 projects. The domain launchpad.net attracted 1 million visitors by August 2009 according to a Compete.com survey.^[3]

[edit] Components

It has several parts:

• Code: source code hosting using the Bazaar version control system.
• Bugs: a bug tracker that allows bugs to be tracked in multiple contexts (e.g. in an Ubuntu package, as an upstream, or in remote bug trackers).
• Blueprints: a system for tracking Specifications and new features.
• Translations: a site for localising applications into different human languages.
• Answers: a community support site and knowledge base.

A significant but less visible component is Soyuz, "the distribution management portion of Launchpad." Launchpad is currently primarily used in the development of Ubuntu, an operating system. Launchpad uses the FOSS (free/open source) Zope 3 application server.

[edit] Collaboration tools

• Trac/Launchpad Plugin
• The Bugzilla Launchpad Plugin
• Launchpad login module for Drupal
• Teams module for Drupal
• Bazaar Plugin for Eclipse ^[4]
• Bugmail - for Thunderbird
• Leonov

[edit] Users

Several of Canonical Ltd's own projects use Launchpad for development including Ubuntu and Bazaar. Development of Launchpad is itself managed in Launchpad.

Other prominent projects using Launchpad for various aspects of managing their development include:

• MySQL (code hosting)^[5]
• Zope 3 (bug tracking)^[6]
• Inkscape (bug tracking)^[7]
• Bazaar
• GNOME Do
• Drizzle
• Upstart
• Linux Mint (bug tracking, blueprints, and translations)^[8][9]
• OpenERP and OpenObject

[edit] Transition to open source

Launchpad was initially criticized by the Jem Report and other members of the free software community for not being available under a free license, such as the GNU GPL, despite its aims. In response, the developers stated that they aimed to eventually release it under a free software license, but that it could potentially take years.^[10] On 9 July 2007, Canonical Ltd. released "Storm", the first Launchpad component made available under a free software license.^[11]

Founder Mark Shuttleworth responded to this criticism that Launchpad needed paid-programmers to continue the development of the Launchpad platform and that there would be no point in developing multiple versions of Launchpad due to the probable incompatibility of the forks^[12]. However, this still left some members of the open-source movement dissatisfied.^[13] On 22 July 2008 Mark Shuttleworth announced at OSCON that the complete source code would be released within the next twelve months.^[14]

On 19 December 2008, Canonical Ltd. released the Launchpad component "lazr.config" and "lazr.delegates" under version 3 of the GNU LGPL.^[15][16]

An open API is currently in beta testing, which will allow programs to interact with the website. Calls for an open API to be released were aided by projects like Leonov that resorted to screenscraping to get data from Launchpad.

In December 2008, Canonical announced that the source code to the Launchpad website would be released under an open-source license by 21 July 2009.^[17][18]. It was also announced that two large components of Launchpad, Soyuz (which is responsible for the build system, package management and Ubuntu package publishing) and Codehosting, would not be released under an open-source license.^[19]. Later, the specific date was changed to a more general timeframe of July/August 2009.^[20][21] However, on 21 July 2009, the software was released under the AGPLv3 (a fully open source license)^[22], including the two components (Codehosting and Soyuz) that were initially planned to remain proprietary^[23].

[edit] See also

• Comparison of open source software hosting facilities

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• official website
  • Launchpad News Blog
• #launchpad on irc.freenode.net
• Canonical