Ubuntu is open source, right? Most of it is, small parts of it are not. Even though it ships with some proprietary hardware drivers (a necessity in the desktop computing world, no matter what the hardliners say), one thing stands out as oddly hypocritical is the fact that Ubuntu's development tools -- collectively called Launchpad -- are proprietary. Even worse are the company's explanations for why Launchpad is proprietary.
Sometimes you're stuck with proprietary software because there are no alternatives. Such is the case with some hardware drivers and a very small number of desktop programs. But whole operating systems are developed in text mode editors like Vim and managed through CVS, and many similar tools exist for the functions that Launchpad provides. It's not as though there are no viable alternatives to Launchpad. If this were a commercial product that Canonical Ltd. bought in order to better facilitate Ubuntu development, then a valid argument could be made in favor of using tools that are more useful and foster greater productivity. In Launchpad's case, though, Canonical wrote the software in-house; they licensed it restrictively by choice.
According to the Launchpad FAQ, "Launchpad exists not just to make development easier within projects, but also to encourage collaboration between projects. With Launchpad, distributors and upstream developers can share bug reports, translations, and code. Until there are standards and APIs that let standalone sites send these things to each other, having a single Launchpad instance is the most practical way of maximizing the collaboration that Launchpad is designed to achieve. It also helps in funding Launchpad development in the short term."
Oh no -- the old "there will be too many different versions" and "open source software doesn't make money" arguments! Launchpad needs to be proprietary so that the company can make money and ensure that no one else can run their own private, modified version of the software. I have never seen an argument for proprietary software so sanguine as this. The fact that it comes from a company that has come to define the open source desktop experience for so many people only makes it worse.
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