Launchpad (website)

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Launchpad
Launchpad homepage on 2008-04-25.
URL	launchpad.net
Type of site	Project Management
Owner	Canonical Ltd.
Created by	Canonical Ltd.

Launchpad is a web application and web site supporting software development, particularly that of free software. Launchpad is developed and maintained by Canonical Ltd.

1 Components
2 Criticism
3 Sources
4 External links

[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, a Linux distribution. Launchpad uses the free/open source Zope 3 application server.

[edit] Criticism

Launchpad has been criticized as being hypocritical 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. The developers have stated that they aim to eventually release it under a free software license, but that it could potentially take years.^[1] On July 9, 2007, Canonical Ltd. released with the Launchpad component "Storm" the first component under a free software license.^[2]

Founder Mark Shuttleworth responded to this criticism that Launchpad needs 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 ^[3]. However, this has still left some members of the open-source movement dissatisfied.^[4]