Launchpad (website)

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Launchpad
Launchpad logo.png
URL launchpad.net
Commercial? Yes
Type of site Project Hosting Server
Registration optional
Available language(s) English
Owner Canonical Ltd.
Created by Canonical Ltd.
Launched January 2004
Alexa rank negative increase 7,819 (March 2012)[1]
Current status Active
Launchpad Suite
Launchpad logo.png
Developer(s) Francis J. Lacoste and 52 others[2]
Initial release June 15, 2005; 6 years ago (2005-06-15)
Stable release 3.0 / September 23, 2009; 2 years ago (2009-09-23)
Preview release 3.1.10
Written in Python
Available in English
Type Project Management
License Affero General Public License
Website launchpad.net/launchpad-project
Picture
Mark Shuttleworth with other Canonical Ltd. employees. Discussing Launchpad at a design sprint in Germany.

Launchpad is a web application and website that allows users to develop and maintain software, particularly free software. Launchpad is developed and maintained by Canonical Ltd.

On July 21, 2009 the source code was released publicly under the GNU Affero General Public License.[3] As of July 2011, the launchpad repository hosts more than 23,500 projects. The domain launchpad.net attracted 1 million visitors by August 2009 according to a Compete.com survey.[4]

Contents

[edit] Components

It has several parts:

  • Answers: a community support site and knowledge base.
  • Blueprints: a system for tracking Specifications and new features.
  • 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).
  • Code: source code hosting using the Bazaar version control system.
  • Translations: a site for localising applications into different human languages.

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

[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:

[edit] 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, 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.[12] On 9 July 2007, Canonical Ltd. released "Storm", the first Launchpad component made available under a free software license.[13]

Founder Mark Shuttleworth's response to this criticism was 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.[14] However, this still left some members of the open-source movement dissatisfied.[15] On 22 July 2008 Mark Shuttleworth announced at OSCON that the complete source code would be released within the next twelve months.[16]

On 19 December 2008, Canonical Ltd. released the Launchpad component "lazr.config" and "lazr.delegates" under version 3 of the GNU LGPL.[17][18]

An open API is currently[when?] 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 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.[19][20] 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.[21] Later, the specific date was changed to a more general timeframe of July/August 2009.[22][23] However, on 21 July 2009, the software was released under the AGPLv3 (a fully free license specifically for web services),[24] including the two components (Codehosting and Soyuz) that were initially planned to remain proprietary.[25]

[edit] See also

Portal icon Free software portal

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Launchpad.net Site Info". Alexa Internet. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/launchpad.net. Retrieved 2012-03-02. 
  2. ^ https://launchpad.net/~launchpad
  3. ^ "Canonical releases source code for Launchpad". Canonical Ltd.. http://www.ubuntu.com/news/canonical-open-sources-launchpad. Retrieved 2009-07-21. 
  4. ^ "launchpad attracts 1m visitors yearly". Compete.com.. http://siteanalytics.compete.com/launchpad.net?metric=uv. Retrieved 2009-08-01 l. 
  5. ^ "Launchpad plugin for Eclipse - using the Launchpad API". 2008-11-14. http://news.launchpad.net/api/launchpad-plugin-for-eclipse-using-the-launchpad-api. Retrieved 2008-12-10. 
  6. ^ "Inkscape moving to Launchpad!". 2007-11-21. http://news.launchpad.net/general/inkscape-moving-to-launchpad. Retrieved 2008-09-09. 
  7. ^ "(Inkscape) Source code repository has moved to Launchpad". 2009-12-09. http://www.inkscape.org/archive.php?lang=en&year=2009&month=12. Retrieved 2009-12-25. 
  8. ^ Linuxmint.com
  9. ^ Distrowatch.com
  10. ^ Arnö, Kaj (2008-06-19). "Version Control: Thanks, BitKeeper - Welcome, Bazaar". http://blogs.mysql.com/kaj/2008/06/19/version-control-thanks-bitkeeper-welcome-bazaar/. Retrieved 2008-06-19
  11. ^ Canonical Ltd. (2007-04-02). "Launchpad 1.0 Beta Released" (Press release). http://www.ubuntu.com/news/LaunchpadRelease. Retrieved 2008-06-20. 
  12. ^ "Launchpad Frequently Asked Questions". Canonical. 2006-08-05. https://launchpad.net/faq. 
  13. ^ "Canonical Releases Storm as Open Source". 2007-07-10. http://www.ubuntu.com/news/storm-python-orm-open-sourced. 
  14. ^ "Launchpad should be free software (free as in freedom)". 2007-04-18. https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad/+bug/50699/comments/10. 
  15. ^ "Ubuntu is built with proprietary software". 2007-07-10. http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/325. 
  16. ^ "Launchpad Source-Code Within 12 Months". 2008-07-22. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NjYwOA. 
  17. ^ lazr.delegates 1.0
  18. ^ lazr.config 1.0
  19. ^ Youtube - UDS Jaunty - Graham Binns
  20. ^ Dev.launchpad.net, OpenSourcing
  21. ^ Blog.launchpad.net, "How we are open sourcing launchpad"
  22. ^ "Open Sourcing Launchpad". Canonical Ltd.. https://dev.launchpad.net/OpenSourcing. Retrieved 2009-07-04. "The process should be completed in July / August 2009." 
  23. ^ "Canonical releases source code for Launchpad". Canonical Ltd.. http://www.ubuntu.com/news/canonical-open-sources-launchpad. Retrieved 2009-07-21. "Canonical, the founder of the Ubuntu project, announced today that it has open-sourced the code that runs Launchpad, the software development and collaboration platform used by tens of thousands of developers." 
  24. ^ Launchpad License
  25. ^ Launchpad is now open source.

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