Launchpad - closed source

Corey Burger corey.burger at gmail.com
Tue Nov 7 08:36:22 GMT 2006


On 11/6/06, Morgan Collett <morgan.collett at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/6/06, Andrew Zajac <arzajac at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Most big web apps built on Free Software are not Free themselves, or
> distributable. Think Google, Yahoo, Amazon etc. However they are
> success stories in the Free/OSS world.
>
> Just because Launchpad is closely coupled with Ubuntu doesn't make it
> different from the above. Ubuntu could exist without Launchpad -
> however Launchpad is itself a strategic platform.

Actually, this is mostly untrue. What a nice short list of what we
lose if LP dies?

-all uploads and the buildds (Soyuz is now part of LP)
-all bugs (in Malone)
-all specs (in Blueprint)
-all authentication for the wiki (auths off LP accounts)
-all team information

Now do see why an open source distribution relying on a closed source
tool is completely unacceptable? Yes, replacement for all those tools
exist, but what we care about is the data and that is what would be
lost.

Corey



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