~launchpad-pqm/launchpad/devel

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Launchpad Strategy

==================

*We want to make Ubuntu the world’s best operating system. To do this, we need

to give Canonical an edge in productivity over and above other Linux vendors

and, just as importantly, help make the development of open source software

faster, more efficient and more innovative than its proprietary rivals.*

Launchpad does this by helping software developers share their work and

plans, not just within a project but also **between** projects.

Introduction

============

This document tries to answer two big questions:

1. *why* are we making Launchpad?

2. *who* is Launchpad for?

This is not our strategy for the year or the scope of Launchpad development

for the next six months.  Rather, it is our answer to these fundamental

questions.

When you are finished reading this document, you should know what problems we

want to solve, what we hope to gain from solving these problems and how we

know if Launchpad is doing well.

Audience

--------

This document is for everyone who cares about improving Launchpad. Primarily,

we’ve written it for Launchpad’s stakeholders within Canonical and for the

developers of Launchpad, whether they are Canonical employees or not.

Why are we making Launchpad?

============================

The world we live in

--------------------

Open source software is bigger than you think.  It is much more than simply

writing the code.  Code has to be packaged, integrated and delivered to users

who can then give feedback and file bugs.  Distributions made up of tens of

thousands of different software packages need to be released to meet a

deadline.  Translations must be made into hundreds of different languages and

accumulated from a variety of sources.  Everywhere bugs need to be tracked,

fixed and checked.  Plans must be made and kept.  Distributions have to be

made to work on a wide variety of hardware platforms with varying degrees of

openness.

Those who make open source software and wish to profit commercially also face

unique challenges.  Contributors are scattered across the world, making

coordination, communication and alignment just that little bit more difficult.

Many contributors are volunteers, and so decisions must often be made by

consensus, deadlines enforced without the leverage of an employment contract

and quality maintained without formal training.  Users of open source software

use a widely heterogeneous stack of software and hardware, thus increasing the

burden of compatibility work.  All of these things make open source software

development more difficult, thus increasing the need for tools to aid

collaboration.

The Ubuntu community, together with Canonical, are dedicated to making the

very best open source operating system possible, one that far excels any

proprietary operating system.  To do this, we need to ensure that the process

of making Ubuntu is as effective as possible.  Moreover, we need to make the

process of making open source software as effective as possible, and then make

it easy, quick and desirable to get that software into Ubuntu.

Secondarily, Canonical's main business is the provision of premium services

built around Ubuntu.  Many of these services are based on proprietary

software, which Canonical must be able to make more quickly and at less cost

than any rival.

The word "effective" covers a multitude of concepts.  Here we mean doing the

*right* work with the highest possible *quality* as *quickly* and with as

little *waste* as possible.

Business goals

--------------

Launchpad exists to give Canonical a competitive advantage over other

operating system vendors and service providers, both proprietary and open

source.

To gain an advantage over *open source* operating system vendors, Canonical is

relying on Launchpad to:

* increase Canonical's effectiveness in making software

* grow and accelerate contributions to Ubuntu

To gain an advantage over proprietary operating system vendors, Canonical

needs Launchpad to do both of the above and:

* improve and accelerate open source software development in general beyond

  that of proprietary software so that the software in Ubuntu is better than

  the software in any rival proprietary operating system

The value flow of Launchpad can be summed up in this diagram:

.. image:: images/value-flow.svg

Who is Launchpad for?

=====================

Launchpad is aimed at many different groups of users.  They can be roughly

described as follows:

Software developers

  These are people who make or contribute to free and open source

  software. They are made up of both paid professionals and volunteers working

  in their spare time.  They vary widely in expertise and patience.  Any given

  software developer might be working on both open source software and

  proprietary software.

Expert users of software

  The sort of people who file bugs, try new releases, run the bleeding edge

  snapshot, are interested in following development plans, who help other

  people on mailing lists. Note that software developers are frequently but

  not always expert users of software.

End users of software

  People who download and install software and then use it.  These people have

  little understanding about what software actually is or how it is made.

  They use it, sometimes without noticing, sometimes enjoying it, sometimes

  hating it.

Translators

  A special class of software developer who is normally a native speaker of a

  language other than English.  They contribute to open source software

  projects not by submitting code, but by translating strings to new

  languages.

Managers

  These are managers in the broad sense of people who are responsible for the

  completion of a task and so need to know what many other people are doing

  towards that goal.  This includes release managers, project leads and

  traditional corporate project managers.  It does not necessarily mean people

  who are employed as managers.

User needs

----------

The people who use Launchpad, in whatever role, share one broad goal: “make

great software and get it to its users”.  To do this, they need:

* tools to facilitate collaboration on their proprietary and open source

  software projects

* a place to host and publish their open source software projects

* as little overhead as possible in maintaining these projects

* more contributors to their projects

* to be able to easily contribute to existing software projects

Some of our users have particular needs:

* managers need to be able to quickly get an overview of activity and

  progress for their teams and their projects

* expert users of software need to be able to give high quality feedback to

  the software developers

Further, we believe that providing tools for cross-project collaboration, we

can benefit our users by:

* giving them feedback from groups of their own users that they couldn’t reach

  before

* reducing the time and effort required to publish software to actual end

  users

* pointing them to knowledge and fixes from other projects in their network

* helping OS-driven improvements reach them code faster, and their

  improvements reach the OS faster

Conflicts between business goals & user needs

---------------------------------------------

Canonical is primarily interested in open source software that runs on Linux

or lives within the Linux ecosystem.  Thus, even though Launchpad could be an

excellent, general platform for Windows, OS X, iOS and Android based software,

our main area of focus is software that is aimed to run natively on Linux.

Canonical is much more interested in quality assurance and release management

than many open source and even proprietary projects.

References

==========

* :doc:`scope`

* :doc:`values`

* `Feature checklist <https://dev.launchpad.net/FeatureChecklist>`_