Launchpad policies

Trademark and logo licence

“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 https://dev.launchpad.net/LaunchpadLicense.

Copyright

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.

Privacy Policy and Data Retention Statement

Privacy Policy and Data Retention Statement for Launchpad.net

This web site is operated by Canonical Ltd.

Our postal address is

One Circular Road,

Douglas, Isle of Man, IM1 1AF

The statement explains to contributors to projects hosted by Launchpad the steps that Launchpad and Canonical take to ensure the security of the data submitted and used by Launchpad.

Launchpad Overview

Launchpad stores and processes contributions to open source software and information about the contributors of that data. This Privacy Policy and Data Retention Statement explains Launchpad’s data processing practices and the principles Launchpad seeks to follow in relation to the security and retention of this data.

If you feel that Launchpad fails to follow this Privacy Policy and Data Retention Statement or if you wish to give feedback on it, please contact us at feedback@launchpad.net.

Launchpad Accounts

You may have a Launchpad account, which you use to log into Launchpad and other associated services. You can use your Launchpad account to add information about yourself to Launchpad. You may use this account to subscribe to receive notifications of changes to bugs, projects, teams, etc.. Data you add to your personal page (e.g. https://launchpad.net/~<you> ) using your Launchpad Account can be changed or removed by you by using the same mechanism used to add it originally.

Information added to personal pages is accessible to other users of Launchpad. Users should ensure that personal information is not added to personal pages if such information should not be accessible to other Launchpad users.

You can close your Launchpad account and no longer be shown as a Launchpad user. You will no longer receive notifications from Launchpad. However, Launchpad will continue to store and show information about public contributions that you have made.

Sources of data

Submitted data

Launchpad users may add information about themselves via their Launchpad accounts and or their personal pages. This information may assist Launchpad in providing services to the contributor such as email notifications of changes to bugs, projects, teams, etc..

Your Launchpad account has the option to store a location for you and to display it on your profile page. Until you set that location yourself, other registered Launchpad users can set it on your behalf. Once your location is set, you can hide it from other users.

Other Collected Data

Launchpad does collect other data that is not displayed publicly. We record what and when pages are visited as well as where the pages were visited from (e.g. IP address).

Information about users of Launchpad may be mirrored from publicly available sources, often by automated processes.

We use cookies to identify you when you visit this website, as well as to allow you to customize how certain Launchpad pages are displayed to you.

Most browsers allow you to choose not to accept cookies, and to remove existing cookies from your system. If you want to know how to do this please look at the help menu on your browser. However, note that you need to accept cookies from our website in order to use all its features.

Data Security

Physical Data Security

We have appropriate security measures in place in our physical facilities to protect against the loss, misuse or alteration of information that we have collected from you.

Data Usage

We process data collected via this website for the purposes of:

Monitoring and improving the quality of the Launchpad service.

Dealing with your inquiries and requests.

Maintaining information as a reference tool or general resource.

Providing you with information about products and services.

Unanticipated Usage

From time to time, we may use visitor information for new, unanticipated uses not previously disclosed in this policy. If our information practices change at some time in the future we will post the policy changes to our web site to notify you of these changes. If you are concerned about how your information is used, you should check back at our web site periodically. We will also announce these changes on the Launchpad Users mailing list and on http://blog.launchpad.net.

Data Retention

General Data Retention Statement

Launchpad retains all data submitted by users permanently.

Except in the circumstances listed below, Launchpad will only delete data if required to do so by law or if data (including files, PPA submissions, bug reports, bug comments, bug attachments, and translations) is inappropriate. Canonical reserves the right to determine whether data is inappropriate. Spam, malicious code, and defamation are considered inappropriate. Where data is deleted, it will be removed from the Launchpad database but it may continue to exist in backup archives which are maintained by Canonical.

Projects and Project Groups

Projects and project groups may be deleted at the project owner's request.

As part of Launchpad’s normal housekeeping, we periodically inspect projects and project groups. We will delete projects or project groups that appear to be abandoned or where no activity has occurred (e.g. a test project or a project containing only spam). In cases where the status of a project/project group is unknown, we may contact the project registrant for clarification prior to deleting it.

File Downloads and Personal Package Archives (PPA)

We provide a mechanism for users to delete their own PPA submissions as well as for project administrators to delete files being offered as downloads.

Once a PPA package has been deleted by the user, or superseded by another package, it will remain on our servers for up to 30 days. After 30 days we will remove the package from our servers.

Bugs

Bugs and bug comments cannot be deleted by users. Maintainers of a project can mark that a bug does not apply to that project.

Branches

We provide a mechanism for users to delete branches.

Questions

Questions and answers cannot be deleted or hidden by users.

Blueprints

Although blueprints cannot be deleted, it is possible to mark a blueprint as "obsolete". Obsolete blueprints are not listed in a project's blueprint listing, but remain accessible via their unique URL.

Translations

An incorrect translation may be corrected by translators approved by the relevant project.