Re: Need for launchpad
On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 11:17:10AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Stephan Hermann <sh@sourcecode.de> writes:
>
> > Well, we can't change the world totally, but avoiding a tool, because
> > it's free, but non-free source, it's more a joke then anything else,
> > because I had to avoid many of the services I need in my daily
> > developers world.
>
> And this belief, in a nutshell, is the reason why I'm a Debian developer
> and, while I might use Ubuntu in a situation where it looks like a good
> distribution, I have no interest in contributing to it except insofar as
> Ubuntu, and anyone else, is welcome to reuse my contributions to Debian.
Do you mean to say that you have been discouraged from contributing to
Ubuntu because the Launchpad source code is not available to you? If so, I
find this confusing, given that Ubuntu was released and active long before
any of the Launchpad infrastructure, and one can contribute to Ubuntu even
today (and many do) without interacting with Launchpad at all. I don't use
Launchpad very much yet myself, though I expect that to change as some of
the more exciting components mature.
The response to this thread has been predictable, given the wording of the
original post and the strong opinions that free software developers often
hold regarding their toolset. A similar argument would surely ensue if
someone proposed that all Debian developers use Subversion for source code
management, for example. Manoj's analogy with human language, while
dripping with sarcasm, is apt.
The reality of the situation is much less controversial. If a Debian
maintainer finds it useful to manage their translations in Rosetta, then
they can do that today, as a matter of individual choice. If they or a
future maintainer of the same package prefers to manage the translations by
hand, they can do that, and never touch Rosetta. Launchpad is a collection
of tools intended to promote more efficient collaboration on the development
of free software, and if it is to succeed, it will be because individuals
choose to use it, not because any organization requires that they do so.
As for licensing, some code has already been released as open source, and
Canonical has made commitments to do more of the same in the future. Anyone
with specific questions about Launchpad is welcome to ask them on the
Launchpad mailing list if they want authoritative answers:
http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/launchpad
--
- mdz
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