Canonical releases source code for Launchpad

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. Launchpad is used to build Ubuntu and thousands of other projects, and its users can now participate directly in the development of Launchpad itself. Launchpad allows developers to host and share code from many different sources using the Bazaar version control system, which is integrated into Launchpad. Translators can collaborate on translations across many different projects. End-users identify bugs affecting one or more projects so that developers can then triage and resolve those bugs. Contributors can write, propose, and manage software specifications. In addition, Launchpad erases barriers to collaboration by enabling people to support each other’s efforts across different project hosting services, both through its web interface and its APIs. Launchpad has everything software projects, open source or not, need to be successful.

“Launchpad accelerates collaboration between open source projects,” said Canonical founder and CEO Mark Shuttleworth. “Collaboration is the engine of innovation in free software development, and Launchpad supports one of the key strengths of free software compared with the traditional proprietary development process. Projects that are hosted on Launchpad are immediately connected to every other project hosted there in a way that makes it easy to collaborate on code, translations, bug fixes and feature design across project boundaries. Rather than hosting individual projects, we host a massive and connected community that collaborates together across many projects. Making Launchpad itself open source gives users the ability to improve the service they use every day.” Access the code via the Launchpad portal