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Canonical Plans a Version-Tracking Tool for Devs
daria42 writes "Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has started work on a new project which aims to make easier for Linux developers to find the latest open source software updates, no matter which distribution they are contributing to. The effort encompasses distributed bug tracking, revision control, language translations and more. Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth wants Ubuntu to take advantage of the software, saying: 'As the framework [for using code from across the community] sets, hopefully we are at the centre of it. Further down the pipeline we may need to differentiate on other grounds.'"
The summary gives the impression that Launchpad development just started, but it's been around for a few months at least. Bug reports from the unsupported packages in Ubuntu's latest release go to Malone, which is a part of Launchpad. Also, I think people have been using Rosetta to do translations for Hoary as well. It looks promising.
Before you ask, Launchpad isn't open source. Yet.
Why exactly are Ubuntu attempting to recreate the wheel here?
This has already been done by Specifix / Foresight Linux (www.foresightlinux.com)
These distros use a system called Conary, developed in part by the guy behind RPM, and the idea of Conary is to offer distro independent management.
Troves can be shadowed between distros, so you can create a distro easily by shadowing a "parent" distro and picking and choosing your updates.
It stores source code and changesets, so all you Gentoo ricers can do an emerge from conary, and the rest of us sane people can just pull up the changesets that give the system instructions on what to change to install package "xyz". The other beauty of changesets is that it gives a degree of distro neutrality.
Bizarre that Ubuntu want to reinvent the wheel rather than contributing to something that already exists.
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
VCFS (Veritas Clustered File System)0 9
http://veritas.com/Products/www?c=product&refId=2
VCFS (Virtual CVS File System)
http://vcfs.sourceforge.net/
I'd be really interested to know what your reason for allowing copyright is, if not to allow author's of a work to have some control over it.
To maximize the amount of material in the public domain by funding its development.
I can't comment on your second paragraph; I didn't understand it.