Open Sourcing Launchpad
We're open-sourcing the code that runs Launchpad.net. The process will be completed by 21 July 2009, coinciding with the 3.0 release (see the schedule of releases).
Why open-source Launchpad?
This isn't just about freeing up the code; we have a chance to do something unique among open-source collaboration sites.
A new Launchpad release comes out every month; furthermore, bleeding-edge changes to Launchpad quickly go live through the continuous beta testing system. This allows a developer to make a bugfix or an improvement to Launchpad and get real-world testing on the change right away. Thus the primary site of Launchpad development will be Launchpad.net itself, rather than developers' external sandboxes, and the development/testing cycle will mesh closely with people's normal workflows. The result: greater efficiency and much better responsiveness to user needs than is usually the case in open development of a hosted service.
How is it being open-sourced?
Much of the code in Launchpad is in modules already, and will be released as independent packages over the next six months. This process has already started — for example see Storm, LAZR.config, and LAZR.delegates. The separating out of such packages will continue after Launchpad is open-sourced too; there will just be more people participating then.
There are also have a number of non-coding tasks, which we'll do roughly according to this schedule:
- Jan 26, 2009 (Wed)
- (Launchpad 2.2.1 release.) Publish pre-release open-sourcing FAQ. We can anticipate some of the questions, but this announcement may stimulate more we hadn't thought of.
- Feb 22, 2009 (Tue)
- Finish internal license vetting, to make sure we don't violate anyone else's license when we open-source.
- Feb 25, 2009 (Wed)
- (Launchpad 2.2.2 release.)
- Mar 18, 2009 (Wed)
Developer documentation wiki should be largely populated by now, with material taken from current internal wikis, plus a newly-written "How to contribute to Launchpad" section.
- Apr 1, 2009 (Wed)
- (Launchpad 2.2.3 release.)
- Apr 29, 2009 (Wed)
- (Launchpad 2.2.4 release.)
- May 27, 2009 (Wed)
- (Launchpad 2.2.5 release; UDS). Take development discussion public: move real-time discussion over to #launchpad-dev on irc.freenode.net, take development mailing list public. Publish a Contributor License Agreement (CLA).
- Jun 24, 2009 (Wed)
- (Launchpad 2.2.6 release.)
- Jul 21, 2009 (Tue)
- Open-source Launchpad itself; release 3.0.