The Roadmap To An Open-Source Launchpad

On July 22nd of 2008 we shared that the source-code to Launchpad.net would be released by Canonical within the next twelve months. Mark Shuttleworth had made this announcement during OSCON 2008.

Not many details surrounding Canonical's plans for open-sourcing Launchpad have been published, but details are beginning to emerge. On the Launchpad Podcast it has been announced that Launchpad 3.0 will be the version that is open-sourced and it is scheduled to take place on the 21st of July. Additional information on their open-source plans can be found from the Launchpad development page.

Launchpad 2.2.1 will be released later this month and with that they will begin publishing FAQs about their open-sourcing process. Several more closed-source Launchpad 2.2.x releases will occur over the next several months. Launchpad 3.0 and the code that makes up this community platform used by Ubuntu and other projects will be released on July 21, 2009. Not all Launchpad components, however, are being open-sourced.