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Launchpad terms of service

"Launchpad" and the Launchpad "Gem" logo are trademarks of Canonical Ltd.

The Launchpad "Gem" logo was created by Eugene Tretyak as part of the Launchpad Logo Contest. The copyright in the Launchpad logo is owned by Canonical Ltd. and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

You can use one of the images from the Launchpad Badge Kit to show that your project uses Launchpad. Canonical may revoke your permission to use these images if you make modifications to the images or use them incorrectly (e.g., on a project that does not use Launchpad.net).

Help, Dev, and News Content Licence

The documentation contained in the Launchpad Help wiki, the Launchpad Development wiki, and on the Launchpad blog is owned by Canonical Ltd. and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

For information about the licence of the Launchpad source code itself, please see LaunchpadLicense.

General copyright

Materials hosted on Launchpad are subject to copyright. Refer to the licence notices in the materials for licence information.

Translations copyright

All translations imported from sources external to Launchpad are owned by the translator that created them. In general, these translations are licensed under the same terms as the software for which they are a translation.

All translations in Launchpad are the work of the translator that created them. Translations of individual strings are made available to Canonical and in turn to you under the BSD license (revised, without advertising clause). We require this so that other projects can use these translations as sources for their own translations, without suffering licensing incompatibilities. Translations of groups of strings from the same project, to the extent forming a derivative work of the project, are made available to Canonical and in turn to you under the licence applicable to the project. See the Translations Licensing FAQ for details.

Bugs copyright

All bug comments are the property of the people who created them. Metadata and statistics generated by the Launchpad Bug Tracker are the property of Canonical Ltd and may be used freely for any purpose as long as accreditation and the Launchpad URL are given along with that data.

Soyuz copyright

All packages contained in distributions or personal package archives within the Launchpad are aggregations of content which may potentially belong to many different people. You should take care to check all copyright messages in source packages and binary packages before assuming you can use them for any purpose.

Build logs and other automatically generated content produced by Soyuz and its related components within the Launchpad are the property of Canonical Ltd, unless otherwise specified therein, and may be used freely for any purpose as long as accreditation and the Launchpad URL are given along with the data.

Automated querying

We provide data feeds and a web service API for automated access to Launchpad's dataset. We strongly recommend you use the feeds and the web service API in preference to screen-scraping or other techniques. If you can't do what you need to do through the feeds and the API,

  • please file a bug so we can improve our service
  • we will allow the use of custom scripts and robots that access the data on the Launchpad web site

In return, we ask that you identify the programs you write so that we can track usage and contact you if your client causes us problems.

  • When using the web service API, identify your application in the OAuth consumer key you use when authenticating against Launchpad.
  • When accessing feeds from a script, or screen-scraping, identify your application in the 'User-Agent' HTTP header.

When writing short scripts for yourself, you can identify your application by giving your email address or the URL to your page on Launchpad. When writing scripts for general distribution, you can identify your application by giving the URL to its homepage. If your application is hosted on Launchpad, or it's easy to find your application's homepage by doing a web search on its name, you can just give its name.

We reserve the right to limit the access of individual users who make requests too often; and of applications that cause problems for Launchpad due to bugs, inefficiency, or malicious intent.

Project eligibility

Launchpad is free of charge for free software projects which meet the following criteria:

  • It must include source code. "Source code" means the preferred form of the work for making modifications. For documentation, it might be XML source files; for images, GIMP XCF files; etc.
  • It must allow modification and distribution of modified copies under the same licence. Just having the source code does not convey the same freedom as having the right to change it.
  • It must allow redistribution.
  • It must not require royalty payments or any other fee for redistribution or modification.
  • It must allow these rights to be passed on along with the software.
  • It must not discriminate against persons, groups or against fields of endeavour. The licence of software hosted by Launchpad can not discriminate against anyone or any group of users and cannot restrict users from using the software for a particular field of endeavour - a business for example.
  • It must not be distributed under a licence specific to one operating system. The rights attached to the software must not depend on the programme's being part of Ubuntu, for example.
  • It must not contaminate other software licences. The licence must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with it. For example, the licence must not insist that all other programmes distributed on the same medium be free software.
  • It may require source modifications to be distributed as patches. In some cases, software authors are happy for others to distribute their software and modifications to their software, as long as the two are distributed separately, so that people always have a copy of their pristine code. We are happy to respect this preference. However, the licence must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code.

Personal Package Archive eligibility

Content may be hosted in a Personal Package Archive ("PPA") on Launchpad if it is approved by Canonical or released under a license which falls under one or more of the following:

To request approval to host content on Launchpad under a license not covered by the list above, bring it up on the Launchpad users mailing list for consideration before uploading it.

Canonical reserves the right (but shall have no obligation) to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse, or remove any or all content that does not conform to the Terms of Service.

Canonical reserves the right to enforce quotas on the Launchpad service, including (but not limited to) disk space, CPU time, and bandwidth usage.

You may not sell, resell, or exploit any portion of the Launchpad service, use of the Launchpad service, or access to the Launchpad service.

Ubuntu "main" and "restricted" Component license Policy Complaint

This policy only addresses the software that you will find in main and restricted, which contain software that is fully supported by the Ubuntu team and must comply with this policy.

Ubuntu 'main' component licence policy
All application spftware included in the Ubuntu main component:

  • Must include source code. The main component has a strict and non-negotiable requirement that application software included in it must come with full source code.
  • Must allow modification and distribution of modified copies under the same licence. Just having the source code does not convey the same freedom as having the right to change it. Without the ability to modify software, the Ubuntu community cannot support software, fix bugs, translate it, or improve it.

Ubuntu 'main' and 'restricted' component licence policy
All application software in both main and restricted must meet the following requirements:

  • Must allow redistribution. Your right to sell or give away the software alone, or as part of an aggregate software distribution, is important because:
    • You, the user, must be able to pass on any software you have received from Ubuntu in either source code or compiled form.
    • While Ubuntu will not charge licence fees for this distribution, you might want to charge to print Ubuntu CDs, or create your own customised versions of Ubuntu which you sell, and should have the freedom to do so.
  • Must not require royalty payments or any other fee for redistribution or modification.It’s important that you can exercise your rights to this software without having to pay for the privilege, and that you can pass these rights on to other people on exactly the same basis.
  • Must allow these rights to be passed on along with the software. You should be able to have exactly the same rights to the software as we do.
  • Must not discriminate against persons, groups or against fields of endeavour. The licence of software included in Ubuntu can not discriminate against anyone or any group of users and cannot restrict users from using the software for a particular field of endeavour - a business for example. So we will not distribute software that is licensed "freely for non-commercial use".
  • Must not be distributed under a licence specific to Ubuntu. The rights attached to the software must not depend on the program being part of Ubuntu system. So we will not distribute software for which Ubuntu has a “special” exemption or right, and we will not put our own software into Ubuntu and then refuse you the right to pass it on.
  • Must not contaminate other software licences.The licence must not place restrictions on other software that is distributed along with it. For example, the licence must not insist that all other programmes distributed on the same medium be free software.
  • May require source modifications to be distributed as patches. In some cases, software authors are happy for us to distribute their software and modifications to their software, as long as the two are distributed separately, so that people always have a copy of their pristine code. We are happy to respect this preference. However, the licence must explicitly permit distribution of software built from modified source code.