Launchpad - closed source

[Andrew Zajac]

On 11/5/06, Matthew East <mdke at ubuntu.com> wrote:
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> Hi,
>
> * Toby Smithe:
> > On Sun, 2006-11-05 at 20:05 +0100, Myriam Rita Schweingruber wrote:
> >> Am Sonntag, 5. November 2006 15:40 schrieb Alexander Jacob Tsykin:
> >>> On Monday 06 November 2006 00:24, Toby Smithe wrote:
> >>>> Yeah; I'm obviously learning where to find things on Launchpad. It's
> >>>> quite intuitive once you get to know it. Now, only if it was open
> >>>> source...
> >>> Just out of curiosity, why isn't it?
> >> Well, IANAL, but as it has not been released (yet), there is no need for a
> >> license. And everyone is free to use it in its actual online version, so why
> >> do you bother ?
> >
> > Bugzilla is free.
>
> I'll have a go at explaining why I think Launchpad ("LP") isn't free
> yet. I have no idea whether this is the real reason or not, but it makes
> sense to me. I filed a bug about the real explanation being missing from
> the LP faq - it's a really frequent question:
>
> https://launchpad.net/products/launchpad/+bug/55486
>
> Note also that LP is about to gain a marketing division, so he will no
> doubt explain and increase awareness about this.
>
> So my idea is this - one of the great aims/purposes of LP is to permit
> bug/feature/support/translation activity to go on and be shared between
> different projects, different distributions, different upstream
> projects, and so on. It is to encourage collaboration between projects.
>
> By open sourcing LP *before* this purpose is fully achieved by the
> software, other projects would be able to setup different instances of
> it, and the benefits of sharing a single resource would be lost. Maybe,
> once LP has perfected sharing between projects, and gradually as more
> projects begin to realise its potential, this risk will no longer exist,
> and more and more code can be open sourced, which as the LP faq
> explains, is a real aim for those working on it.
>
> Matt
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>
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Free software is free because of the terms by which it is distributed.
 A free licence makes the software free - the licence is between the
author of the software and the person who downloads the application.

Launchpad is not distributed.  No one else runs it but Canonical, so
there is no such licence that comes into play.

The question is whether Canoncal is being a good citizen by not
distributing the code under a GPL-compatible licence even though the
goal is to not have more than one launchpad up and running.