Mark-shuttleworth-launchpad-wiesbaden-big

Launchpad is a

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is created with web technologies and runs via a web browser. Web applications emerged during the late 1990s and allowed for the server to dynamically build a response to the request, ...

and

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

that allows users to develop and maintain software, particularly

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

. It is developed and maintained by

Canonical Ltd Canonical Ltd. is a privately-held computer software company based in London, England. It was founded and funded by South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth to market commercial support and related services for Ubuntu and related projects. ...

. On 21 July 2009, the

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

was released publicly under the

GNU Affero General Public License The GNU Affero General Public License (GNU AGPL) is a free, copyleft license published by the Free Software Foundation in November 2007, and based on the GNU GPL version 3 and the ''Affero General Public License'' (non-GNU). It is intended fo ...

. , the Launchpad repository hosts more than 40,000 projects. The domain ''launchpad.net'' attracted 1 million visitors by August 2009 according to a

Compete.com Compete.com was a web traffic analysis service. The company was founded in 2000, and ceased operations in December 2016. Services Compete.com provided two categories of information: *Site Analytics, a free service, where the user can enter a ...

survey.

Components

It has several parts: * Answers: a community support site and knowledge base. * Blueprints: a system for tracking new features. * Bugs: a

bug tracker Tracking system or defect tracking system is a software application that keeps track of reported software bugs in software development projects. It may be regarded as a type of issue tracking system. Many bug tracking systems, such as those used ...

that allows bugs to be tracked in multiple contexts (e.g. in an Ubuntu package, as an upstream, or in remote bug trackers). * Code: source code hosting, with support for the

Bazaar A bazaar or souk is a marketplace consisting of multiple small Market stall, stalls or shops, especially in the Middle East, the Balkans, Central Asia, North Africa and South Asia. They are traditionally located in vaulted or covered streets th ...

and

Git Git () is a distributed version control system that tracks versions of files. It is often used to control source code by programmers who are developing software collaboratively. Design goals of Git include speed, data integrity, and suppor ...

version control systems. * Translations: a site for localising applications into different

language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

s. A significant but less visible component is Soyuz, "the distribution management portion of Launchpad." Launchpad is currently primarily used in the development of

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...

, an

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

. Launchpad uses the

FOSS Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...

( free/

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

) Zope 3 application server.

Users

Several of Canonical Ltd.'s own projects use Launchpad for development including

and Bazaar. Development of Launchpad is itself managed in Launchpad. Other prominent projects using Launchpad for various aspects of managing their development include: * JOSM (translations) *

Linux Mint Linux Mint is a community-developed Linux distribution. It is based on Ubuntu and designed for x86-64 based computers; another variant is based on Debian which is named Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) and has both 64-bit and IA-32 support. T ...

(translations) *

MariaDB MariaDB is a community-developed, commercially supported Fork (software development), fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. Developm ...

(mailing list) *

OpenStack OpenStack is a free, open standard cloud computing platform. It is mostly deployed as infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) in both public and private clouds where virtual servers and other resources are made available to users. The software pla ...

(bug tracking) * Pinta (bug tracking and translations) * Upstart *

elementary OS Elementary OS (stylized as elementary OS) is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu LTS. It promotes itself as a "thoughtful, capable, and ethical" replacement to macOS and Microsoft Windows, Windows and has a pay what you want, pay-what-you-wan ...

Transition to free software

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 The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

, 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. On 9 July 2007, Canonical Ltd. released

Storm A storm is any disturbed state of the natural environment or the atmosphere of an astronomical body. It may be marked by significant disruptions to normal conditions such as strong wind, tornadoes, hail, thunder and lightning (a thunderstor ...

, the first Launchpad component made available under a free software license. Founder

Mark Shuttleworth Mark Richard Shuttleworth (born 18 September 1973) is a South African and British entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux operating system. In 2002, Shuttleworth became the first African to travel to spa ...

's responded to this criticism saying "we are all actively working on making Launchpad open source" adding that the funding the salaries of Launchpad's developers to be higher priority, and claiming immediate release would result multiple unfederated instances of Launchpad. However, this still left some members of the

open-source movement The open-source software movement is a social movement that supports the use of open-source licenses for some or all software, as part of the broader notion of open collaboration. The open-source movement was started to spread the concept/idea ...

dissatisfied. On 22 July 2008, Mark Shuttleworth announced at OSCON that the complete source code would be released within the next twelve months. On 19 December 2008, Canonical Ltd. released the Launchpad component "lazr.config" and "lazr.delegates" under version 3 of the

GNU LGPL The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

. An open

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

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

screen scraping Data scraping is a technique where a computer program extracts data from human-readable output coming from another program. Description Normally, data transfer between programs is accomplished using data structures suited for automated processin ...

to get data from Launchpad. In December 2008, Canonical announced that the source code to the Launchpad website would be released under a free software license by 21 July 2009.Dev.launchpad.net
OpenSourcing 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 a free software license.Cpsblaunchpad.com
"How we are open sourcing launchpad" Later, the specific date was changed to a more general timeframe of July/August 2009. However, on 21 July 2009, the software was released under the AGPLv3 (a fully free license specifically for web services), including the two components (Codehosting and Soyuz) that were initially planned to remain proprietary.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Launchpad (Website) Canonical (company) Free software websites Internet services supporting OpenID Open-source software hosting facilities Project hosting websites Software using the GNU Affero General Public License Git repository hosting websites

Components

Users

Transition to free software

See also

References

External links