London July 21, 2009: 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.

For those not familiar, “Launchpad is a free software hosting and development website. We make it easy to collaborate across multiple projects.” More information about Launchpad is here: Collaboration, project management and code hosting for free software https://launchpad.net/+about

Launchpad is a suite of tools that help people and teams to work together on free software. It is hosted at Launchpad.net by Canonical, Ltd, and [now] it is open source itself, licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3.

Canonical's most famous project is Ubuntu.  But Launchpad, another of the company's major endeavors, has been around just as long - even though many casual Ubuntu users may not be aware of its existence.  Here's a look at the value Launchpad offers, and where it fits into Canonical's present and future.

During the Ubuntu Live Conference in Portland, Ore., Canonical announced the beta release of its Launchpad PPA (Personal Package Archive) service, a new way for developers to build and publish packages of their code, documentation, artwork, themes and other contributions to free software.

Ubuntu is open source, right?

The controversial Affero general public license could get an unexpected boost from Ubuntu developer Canonical. Mark Shuttleworth, Canonical's chief executive, has said AGPL is "a strong candidate" for the eventual open source release of Launchpad, Canonical's developer collaboration tool.

Early this week, Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, will be releasing its Launchpad Personal Package Archive service, a new way for developers to build and publish packages of their code, documentation, artwork, themes and other contributions to the Ubuntu environment on desktop, server and now mobile environments.

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #140 for the week April 26th - May 2nd, 2009.