Canonical looking to beta Microsoft

Ubuntu Linux backer Canonical has launched a beta version of its Launchpad service, part of an effort to make open source programming methods a better match for Microsoft.

Launchpad is a website that provides a foundation for Ubuntu's co-operative programming projects, with features for tracking bugs, managing source code repositories, and planning new features. Canonical chief executive Mark Shuttleworth believes its broader use could help marshal free and open source software forces more effectively against Microsoft.

Shuttleworth said in an interview after the move last week: "Microsoft has an efficient core infrastructure that allows developers from one part of the company to connect with a developer on another. In a free software world, if we want to match that, we have to crank up the level of collaboration."

Launchpad was founded to run the Ubuntu project but it's now open to other projects. Three - Jokosher, SilvaCMS and Zope - are hosted there now.

That hosting foundation makes Launchpad more like VA Software's Sourceforge.net site, which hosts thousands of open source projects. Shuttleworth points out some differences, though: Launchpad can't currently host a project's web page or run mailing list discussions. Canonical will add the mailing list support and is considering the web page option as well, Shuttleworth said.

The company's goal isn't to gobble up the activity of other hosting sites, Shuttleworth said. "We're not trying to convince people to switch off their own infrastructure and adopt Launchpad wholesale," he said. For example, one feature of Launchpad is the ability to link bugs tracked on Launchpad with related bugs at other sites.

Though Launchpad is not entirely open source software, it will be at some point, Shuttleworth said. "I won't commit to a date for open sourcing Launchpad. I think it's inevitable," he said. The reason Shuttleworth won't do so now is because he doesn't want the project to fork into incompatible versions.

Launchpad supports another co-operative programming tool, the Bazaar software for managing programmers' different branches of a project's source code tree. To build Bazaar, Canonical hired lead architect Martin Poole, who had also worked on the Linux kernel for HP and who had developed distcc, a compiler that could use several machines to turn the source code written by people into the binary instructions understood by computers.

Stephen Shankland writes for CNET News.com